About four years ago, at the age of 100, Betty Reid Soskin retired from the National Park Service as the oldest serving ranger in park history.
And on December 21, 2025, Soskin died at the age of 104.
After a lifetime of community activism, Soskin served as a ranger at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California — the same park that she helped create in 2000.
As a frequent collaborator and consultant on park orientation videos geared toward visitors, Soskin was a staunch proponent of including conflicting, intersectional perspectives that make up “real” national park history: the “heroic places, the contemplative places, the scenic wonders, the shameful places, and the painful places.”
She began her career with the National Park Service at 85. Soskin became a park ranger to share with visitors the diverse experiences of women during wartime, ensuring that the unique, tumultuous history of Black women was not erased in the singular story of Rosie the Riveter.
“If we go back and revisit that era, in truth, as it was lived by those of us who lived it, only then can we get a baseline against which to measure how far we've come,” Soksin said in a speech at the Rosie the Riveter Visitor Education Center.
“If we don't know where we started, we have no conception of where we are or how we got here. Only if we go back and retrace our steps. And that's what the park became for me.”
In addition to her legacy within the National Parks Service, Soskin and her first husband opened Reid’s Records — one of the first Black-owned record stores in the California Bay Area — in 1945.
Throughout her life, she was an accomplished songwriter, organized and fundraised with the Black Panthers, and was honored with the presidential coin from President Barack Obama in 2015.
Her memoir, “Sign My Name to Freedom,” explores the longevity, art, and activism she is best known for. The book has been transformed into an in-progress documentary and musical about Soskin’s life.
In 2022, Soskin spoke with Good Good Good for the Generations Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
She said her great-grandmother was the first person who inspired her to make a difference in the world.
“She was born in 1846, into slavery, and she was freed at age 19. I knew her because our lives connected. She was born in 1846, and died in 1948. My mother was born in 1884 and died in 1995. I was born in 1921, and my life has continued until now,” Soskin told us.
“The three of us have bridged lots and lots of history.”
She said it was “hard to zero in” on the entirety of her legacy, but that she was inspired by future generations who also want to make the world a better place.
“I think that knowing that there are people who want to make a difference, maybe in itself, is as much as we need to know. I think we all make a difference just because we want to,” Soskin said.
“Concentrate on the questions, rather than the answers. Because the questions always change. Find more questions to ask, because I don’t think that we’re ever going to find them all.”
Amid her diverse and vast career in social justice and music, she said her four children represent her most important legacy.
“I think that my children are probably my greatest attribute, and I appreciate them more now than I ever did. I think maybe that's what we all give, that we live our lives for our children,” Soskin said in 2022.
“They are so much a part of me, and I'm so aware of it. I'm so aware that I'm leaving behind a part of myself.”
Header image by NPS Photo/Luther Bailey
