America's Oldest Park Ranger Retires at 100
April 8, 2022 2:49 PM Subscribe
Betty Reid Soskin, the oldest active park ranger for the National Park Service (NPS), retired on March 31 at the age of 100. As an NPS employee, she promoted the stories of African American people and women of color who contributed to the home front effort during WWII
Soskin, who is also an activist, musician, and pioneering businesswoman, began working with the San Francisco-area park as a consultant in 2000. At the time, she was the only person of color in planning meetings and voiced her complicated relationship with Rosie the Riveter, who had come to symbolize the experience of white women during the war.
Soskin, who is also an activist, musician, and pioneering businesswoman, began working with the San Francisco-area park as a consultant in 2000. At the time, she was the only person of color in planning meetings and voiced her complicated relationship with Rosie the Riveter, who had come to symbolize the experience of white women during the war.
An amazing woman, a local treasure. IIRC, the Rosie the Riveter Museum is the only National Park site that is strictly a museum, not a natural site or monument with actual grounds to explore.
I attended a fundraiser banquet for the Rosie museum a few years ago when my company made a contribution. I was a reluctant attendant as a work obligation. But they seated an actual former Rosie at each table and I suddenly found the whole event meaningful and thrilling. That whole Rosie era was a fundamental turning point for women in the workforce - as important as suffrage or the Pill as a step toward equality. I had our table's Rosie sign the program and I still have it.
posted by rekrap at 3:11 PM on April 8, 2022 [16 favorites]
I attended a fundraiser banquet for the Rosie museum a few years ago when my company made a contribution. I was a reluctant attendant as a work obligation. But they seated an actual former Rosie at each table and I suddenly found the whole event meaningful and thrilling. That whole Rosie era was a fundamental turning point for women in the workforce - as important as suffrage or the Pill as a step toward equality. I had our table's Rosie sign the program and I still have it.
posted by rekrap at 3:11 PM on April 8, 2022 [16 favorites]
These are the things I need to know about.
thanks for this.
posted by clavdivs at 3:38 PM on April 8, 2022
thanks for this.
posted by clavdivs at 3:38 PM on April 8, 2022
As if she weren't amazing enough, in 2016 Betty Reid Soskin returned to work after recovering from a beating received during a home invasion robbery - at 97 years old.
From the article, she pondered while recovering:
"I couldn't deal with the world close up," she said. "So I had to move the lens out. I needed the distance, but then I began to see myself as part of the whole. The violence we are suffering individually is an expression of what we are all experiencing collectively."
Just incredible.
posted by rekrap at 3:39 PM on April 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
From the article, she pondered while recovering:
"I couldn't deal with the world close up," she said. "So I had to move the lens out. I needed the distance, but then I began to see myself as part of the whole. The violence we are suffering individually is an expression of what we are all experiencing collectively."
Just incredible.
posted by rekrap at 3:39 PM on April 8, 2022 [6 favorites]
Ahhhh!! So glad for her. Also kicking myself for not renting a damn car and driving out to see her in action before this well-deserved retirement - I saw a piece on her in the NYT some months ago. I will content myself with reading more about how extraordinary she is!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 7:12 PM on April 8, 2022
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 7:12 PM on April 8, 2022
Really amazing woman. The museum is a really great visit and her voice & perspective are all over it. It's focused on how localized around the large ship yards in WW2 there was such an influx of cash for workers of all genders & races, and it injected so much prosperity and joy into the people living & working around there. The museum talks about how people were living before & during that period. And it really starkly shows how basically people need money to live and when they do, they do.
posted by bleep at 8:03 PM on April 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by bleep at 8:03 PM on April 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Poking around online a bit (I was curious about her last name, which she wrote about here), I ran across her blog! http://cbreaux.blogspot.com/
She's so fascinating.
posted by needs more cowbell at 5:27 AM on April 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
She's so fascinating.
posted by needs more cowbell at 5:27 AM on April 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
The project encompasses the museum, which is part of a vibrant public space at an old Ford assembly plant, plus a facility that was once a huge daycare center for Rosies the Riveters during World War II with amazing spiral slides built into it as fire escapes. Also a kickass elementary school that serves, last I heard, 100% poor kids who qualify for free breakfasts and lunches (there are several classrooms set aside as exhibits of public schooling during the war). I think there is also a formal connection to the SS Red Oak, one of the last victory ships built in Richmond that helped win the war, now berthed nearby as a museum, too. I had a tiny role arranging the private financing to pull this all together a decade ago, and it is one of the accomplishments I'm proudest of sharing.
Betty Soskin is amazing, and it's hard to believe she won't be at the museum the next time I visit. There is a lost history of the Bay Area during World War II that is preserved here that includes a huge chapter of the Great Migration of blacks out of the South. Betty was the living embodiment of that and remains a member of the communities in Richmond and elsewhere in the Bay Area that have grown from that over the last 80 years.
posted by Scarf Joint at 11:43 AM on April 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Betty Soskin is amazing, and it's hard to believe she won't be at the museum the next time I visit. There is a lost history of the Bay Area during World War II that is preserved here that includes a huge chapter of the Great Migration of blacks out of the South. Betty was the living embodiment of that and remains a member of the communities in Richmond and elsewhere in the Bay Area that have grown from that over the last 80 years.
posted by Scarf Joint at 11:43 AM on April 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
Wow, her blog is really something! Thanks for that addition, needs more cowbell.
posted by kittensyay at 12:02 PM on April 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by kittensyay at 12:02 PM on April 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I hope this isn't too far off topic, as it gets very far away from women and people of color, but is related to the history of Park Rangers, hermits and/or people off the grid.
I recently read these and found them interesting:
* The Last Season - about an actual park ranger! Mystery. Sad ending.
* Desert Solitude (warning: the author is revealed as a serious jerk later in life)
* Finding Everett Ruess - kind of a jerk and also hated rattlesnakes
* The Stranger in the Woods - kind of a whodunit - can a person really dissappear?
posted by soylent00FF00 at 5:53 PM on April 10, 2022
I recently read these and found them interesting:
* The Last Season - about an actual park ranger! Mystery. Sad ending.
* Desert Solitude (warning: the author is revealed as a serious jerk later in life)
* Finding Everett Ruess - kind of a jerk and also hated rattlesnakes
* The Stranger in the Woods - kind of a whodunit - can a person really dissappear?
posted by soylent00FF00 at 5:53 PM on April 10, 2022
I remember a school trip to the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in Orange, NJ when I was in sixth grade. Our uniformed park service guide was a jolly old guy who was a former employee of the Edison lab. He told us stories of personally assisting Mr. Edison with his various experiements and working in "The Black Maria" - an early film stage.
(Note: I am less than 100 years old.)
posted by zaelic at 7:08 AM on April 13, 2022
(Note: I am less than 100 years old.)
posted by zaelic at 7:08 AM on April 13, 2022
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Sort of wish I'd made a switch to that track when I was offered it at age 20, but that's a delicate age and it's hard to discern the wise path in the immediacy of youth.
posted by hippybear at 3:00 PM on April 8, 2022 [2 favorites]