Betty Reid Soskin, Oldest National Parks Ranger, Turns 100

RICHMOND, CA — The National Park Service is celebrating its oldest working park ranger, who works in Richmond, as she turns 100 Wednesday.

Betty Reid Soskin works at Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park. Soskin was 84 when she began working with the NPS in the early 2000s to tell previously untold stories of Black Americans on the home front during World War II. She became a permanent park employee in 2011, according to the NPS website.

On Wednesday, the West Contra Costa Unified School District renamed a school in her honor. The former Juan Crespi Middle School in El Sobrante is now Betty Reid Soskin Middle School.

Soskin, born Betty Charbonnet, moved from Louisiana to Oakland with her family after a historic flood in 1927. She graduated from Castlemont High School. Soskin worked in a segregated Union hall during World War II as a file clerk.

In 1945, Soskin and her husband, Mel Reid, founded Reid's Records in Berkeley. It was one of the first Black-owned music stores in the city, and closed in 2019, as Berkeleyside reports. Soskin also worked for Berkeley City Council as a staffer, and served two West Contra Costa County as a field representative for two members of the California State Assembly, according to her NPS biography.