By all accounts, Betty Reid Soskin lived quite the life. She was a Civil Rights activist, songwriter, and record shop owner. In her 80s, she became a National Park Service (NPS) interpreter in California and served for 16 years, becoming the oldest park ranger in the country.
And on Sunday, Dec. 21, Soskin passed away peacefully at the age of 104 while surrounded by her family at their home in Richmond, Calif.
When she became a ranger in 2004, Soskin brought her lived experiences as a Black woman to her work at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historic Park in California. She had plenty of life experience to share with park visitors.
After the war, Soskin tried to work for the U.S. Air Force, but quit after experiencing racial discrimination, according to her NPS biography.
Soskin was passionate about including the experiences of diverse women in historical accounts of the home front in World War II. “What gets remembered is a function of who’s in the room doing the remembering,” she told NPR in 2014.
In a social media post, Soskin’s family shared that “[s]he led a fully packed life and was ready to leave.” Her family asked that in lieu of flowers, people send donations to Betty Reid Soskin Middle School.
Betty Reid Soskin: A Life of Music and Service
There’s little doubt that Soskin made a big impact on many people. After all, the above Facebook post racked up more than 700 comments in less than 24 hours.
Soskin made national headlines a few years ago when she turned 100. It was also the year she announced her retirement from the park service. She had dedicated 16 years of service to the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park.
In her 2014 interview with NPR, Soskin said she has “lots and lots of lives.” That includes her time writing protest songs during the Civil Rights Movement and working for years in local politics — experiences she drew from during her tenure at the historical park.
For Soskin, World War II wasn’t just history — it was part of her life story. During the war, Betty worked as a file clerk in the segregated Union hall of Boilermaker’s A-36, the NPS wrote in a memorial post. In 1945, she and her husband, Mel Reid, founded one of the first Black-owned music stores, which stayed open for decades until its closure in 2019.
Soskin was also a talented singer-songwriter whose protest songs became the subject of a still-unfinished documentary.
But Soskin was just as passionate about public service as she was about making art. She worked in roles as staff to a Berkeley city council member and as a field representative for two California State Assembly members. In 1995, Soskin received the Woman of the Year award from the California Legislature and later received a silver medallion from the WWII Museum in New Orleans.
Soskin also published a memoir: 2018’s Sign My Name to Freedom. In the book’s introduction, Soskin’s friend and relative J. Douglas Allen-Taylor tells readers that Soskin is often celebrated for her longevity. However, it was her ability to weave together music, storytelling, activism, and history that inspired everyone who knew her, Allen-Taylor said.
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