‘America’s Oldest Park Ranger’ Is Only Her Latest Chapter

The Rosie the Riveter / World War II Home Front National Historical Park, which sprawls crossed the erstwhile shipyards successful Richmond, Calif., connected the northeast borderline of San Francisco Bay, tells the tremendous communicative of the largest wartime mobilization successful American past and the sweeping societal changes it sparked.

Visitors tin ascent aboard an tremendous Victory ship, 1 of much than 700 vessels produced successful Richmond — and, successful the acquisition shop, prime up swag emblazoned with the iconic representation of the red-kerchiefed Rosie herself, limb flexed up with “We Can Do It!” bravado.

But for many, the parkland is synonymous with different woman: Betty.

Betty Reid Soskin, who turns 100 connected Sept. 22, is the oldest progressive ranger successful the National Park Service. Over the past decennary and a half, she has go some an icon of the work and an improbable celebrity, drafting overflow crowds to talks and a dependable watercourse of media interviewers anxious for the eloquent words of an indomitable 5 feet 3 inch great-grandmother erstwhile described by a workfellow arsenic “sort of similar Bette Davis, Angela Davis and Yoda each rolled into one.”

Watch adjacent a little online clip of 1 of her ranger talks, with her gentle but uncompromising tell-it-like-it-is style, and you recognize her appeal. But Ms. Soskin herself inactive seems a spot bewildered by “all that,” arsenic she enactment it during a caller interview, gesturing toward a partition covered with framed citations and honors successful her comfortably overstuffed flat successful the Richmond hills.

“I don’t person immoderate consciousness of being that important,” she said, adjusting her tiny framework successful a immense armchair. The lone happening she has ever tried to do, she said, is “tell the truth.”

Ms. Soskin became a parkland ranger successful her 80s, astir by accident. In 2000, she was moving arsenic a tract typical for a California authorities legislator who asked her to beryllium successful connected aboriginal readying meetings for the park, which had conscionable been authorized by Congress. At the archetypal meeting, she blurted retired that she had a “love-hate relationship” with the Rosie the Riveter icon, which she saw arsenic telling a achromatic women’s story.

The half-million Black women who worked successful home-front jobs included immoderate who worked arsenic welders and riveters, but Ms. Soskin’s acquisition was different. During the war, she worked arsenic a record clerk successful a segregated portion of the historically all-white Boilermakers union, which had resisted demands to let afloat rank to Black workers.

“What gets remembered depends connected who is successful the country doing the remembering” — it’s thing of a mantra for Ms. Soskin, who stayed successful that room, and astatine that park, and kept talking: archetypal arsenic a assemblage liaison, past arsenic a seasonal circuit usher and, since 2007, arsenic a full-time interpretive ranger.

In that role, she speaks not to the acquisition of Rosie the Riveter, but to her ain experience. “When I became a ranger,” she said, “I was taking backmost my ain history.”

Today the parkland tells the communicative not lone of women who went into “men’s jobs” to enactment the warfare effort but besides of Mexican American braceros, the Japanese American angiosperm growers of Richmond who were sent to interment camps and the boxcar “Indian Village” acceptable up to location recently arrived railway workers from the New Mexican pueblos.

“Without Betty’s influence, we astir apt would not person told assorted antecedently marginalized stories successful arsenic overmuch depth,” said Tom Leatherman, who has been parkland superintendent since 2010. But what leaves him successful “awe,” helium said, is her quality to link with visitors and amusement them that past belongs to, and is made by, everyone.

“Betty has an astonishing quality to stock her ain communicative successful a truly idiosyncratic and susceptible mode — not truthful radical cognize much astir her, but truthful they recognize that they excessively person a story,” helium said. “We each person a past — and it’s conscionable arsenic important arsenic the past we larn successful school.”

Ms. Soskin’s beingness has had truthful galore twists and turns it’s hard to support them straight: She’s been a suburban mother, antiwar activist, musician, concern owner, module wife, assemblage advocate, governmental aide, blogger and, of course, parkland ranger. “I’ve ever pushed retired aged worldly and made country for the new,” she said.

She was calved Betty Charbonnet successful Detroit successful 1921. She spent her aboriginal years successful New Orleans, wherever her close-knit family’s Creole and Cajun roots ran deep. In 1927, aft their location was destroyed successful the Great Mississippi Flood, the household moved to a racially mixed vicinity successful Oakland, Calif., wherever her begetter and uncles worked arsenic waiters and Pullman porters, and lived successful a tight-knit, socially conservative, devoutly Catholic Creole world.

They were a decennary up of the warfare mobilization that would bring millions pouring into California to enactment successful defense-related industries, including immoderate 500,000 African Americans, mostly from the South, successful what has been called the largest voluntary westward Black migration successful American history.

For galore who came west, the warfare years brought accrued opportunity, and rising expectations, which would assistance substance the civilian rights and women’s movements. For Ms. Soskin, who had grown up successful racially mixed neighborhoods and schools, it besides brought her archetypal experiences with overt, ceremonial segregation.

When the warfare started, she took a occupation successful an Air Force office, wherever she was amazed to recognize she was passing for white. She acceptable the grounds straight, and asked if she would inactive get her promotion. The reply was no. “I walked retired connected the U.S. authorities and told them to shove it,” she aboriginal wrote in her 2018 memoir “Sign My Name to Freedom.”

That aforesaid week, her hubby Mel, a prima assemblage jock who’d enlisted successful the Navy lone to beryllium relegated to moving arsenic a cook, near the service. “He was going to combat for his country,” she said. “But helium recovered retired helium could lone navigator for his country.”

During the war, Ms. Soskin ne'er saw a vessel being built, arsenic she often relays successful her ranger talks. But she vividly remembers the nighttime of July 17, 1944, erstwhile an tremendous munitions detonation astatine Port Chicago, astir 25 miles from the shipyards, killed 320 people, astir two-thirds of them Black enlisted men who had been relegated to the unsafe work. (One of the worst home-front disasters of the war, it helped spur the desegregation of the military.)

Earlier that day, she and her hubby had hosted a radical of Black servicemen (who were excluded from the segregated U.S.O.) astatine a creation party. Were immoderate of them among those killed, she inactive wonders?

And adjacent aft telling the communicative umpteen times successful her ranger talks, Ms. Soskin seems freshly shocked astatine what she learned overmuch later: The Black enlisted men were buried successful a segregated subject cemetery.

“I didn’t cognize however they pulled the Black bodies retired from the achromatic bodies,” she said. “And wherever would I person gone?”

After the war, she and Mel went into concern for themselves, selling “race records” that achromatic stores wouldn’t touch, operating a makeshift store retired of a model chopped successful the partition of their Berkeley garage. In 1952, arsenic the concern boomed, they moved to Walnut Creek, a seemingly idyllic and affluent achromatic suburb eastbound of the hills.

They had bought the onshore via a achromatic person and, erstwhile they moved, they initially received threats. When Ms. Soskin learned that a fundraiser astatine the section simple schoolhouse would see a blackface fig performed by the teachers and administrators, she confronted the principal, past sat successful the beforehand row, crying the full time.

Later, she became progressive successful societal justness causes done the Unitarian Universalist Church, participated successful antiwar protests, raised wealth for the Black Panthers and served arsenic a delegate for George McGovern astatine the 1972 Democratic National Convention, representing the precise neighbors who had initially rejected her.

But she says she hadn’t intended to beryllium a trailblazer. “I became an activist,” she said, “simply due to the fact that of who I was.”

In her memoir, Ms. Soskin writes of the struggles of her light-skinned father, who initially couldn’t get a occupation successful California “because helium wasn’t Black capable for the railroads and helium wasn’t achromatic capable to beryllium white.” And she has been unfastened astir the realities of being a Black pistillate successful predominantly achromatic spaces who often recovered herself, arsenic she has enactment it, “on a span interpreting 1 broadside for the other.”

In the aboriginal 1960s, arsenic an isolated young parent of 4 successful suburbia, she started playing guitar and penning songs (sometimes portion ironing). It was a mode of dealing with her deteriorating matrimony and what she describes arsenic a intelligence breakdown, but besides a conveyance for her evolving governmental and radical consciousness.

The net is awash with her interviews, but her euphony is harder to find. During my visit, her girl Di’ara played a signaling of a overmuch younger Betty singing connected a section vigor program.

The archetypal song, “Little Boy Black,” she explains connected the recording, was written during “a precise aggravated Black period,” erstwhile she was “deeply progressive successful Black nationalism.” Her dependable is whispery and sweet, the lyrics biting.

If determination was a infinitesimal erstwhile her afloat aforesaid came backmost retired of the box, she says, it was 1987, erstwhile her begetter and 2 ex-husbands died wrong 3 months of each other.

“I had ever been defined by the men successful my life,” she said. “I was devastated. Then, each of a sudden, I stepped retired and I’ve been spinning astir successful abstraction ever since. I didn’t truly cognize who I was until then.”

A fewer years earlier, arsenic Mel’s wellness declined, she had taken implicit Reid’s Records, rescuing it from the verge of bankruptcy. (It closed permanently successful 2019.) She became a unit successful the community, advocating caller lodging and different efforts to revive the then-blighted area.

Next came the occupation with the authorities legislator and, done that, the park, and the accidental to wage what she has called “a federally funded revolution” from the visitant center’s basement theater.

Ms. Soskin has often spoken of the powerfulness of putting connected the parkland ranger azygous — today, less than 7 percent of National Park Service unit are Black — and the connection that seeing her successful it sends to small girls of color, and others who mightiness not spot the nationalist parks arsenic inclusive of them.

“So galore opportunities are tied to uniforms,” she said. “Uniforms person dictated truthful overmuch of what Black radical were.”

Over her fireplace hangs a coating of her maternal great-grandmother Leontine Breaux Allen, who was calved enslaved successful 1846 and died 3 years aft World War II, astatine 102. Leontine had worked arsenic a midwife, arsenic good arsenic an adjunct to a circuit-riding doc who came done St. James Parish, La., each 3 months, erstwhile she would bent a achromatic towel successful beforehand of houses wherever attraction was needed.

For each her accolades, Ms. Soskin sees herself, similar Leontine, arsenic different “helper,” dedicated to “draping symbolic ‘white towels’ implicit imaginary gateposts.”

And what would she similar her ain great-grandchildren to retrieve astir her?

“That she was honest,” she said. “The lone mode for maine to truly beryllium capable to unrecorded successful this satellite is to woody with it truthfully.”