Middle School Students Celebrate Betty Reid Soskin, the Nation’s Oldest Park Ranger, at 104

At 104 years old, Betty Reid Soskin still commands a room.

As she entered her namesake middle school in Contra Costa County on Monday, her 104th birthday, a hush came over the crowd of students awaiting her arrival.

Then came the cheers and singing: “Happy Birthday, Miss Betty!”

Before her retirement in 2022, Reid Soskin was the oldest park ranger in the country, having started her career in the National Park Service at 85 at Richmond’s Rosie the Riveter World War II Homefront National Historical Park. She retired from the park service at the age of 100.

As is now an annual tradition, Reid Soskin and her family stopped by the school for her birthday, where students and staff celebrated her. As she made her rounds, she and the students — generations apart — seemed to be awestruck in each other’s presence.

The East Bay middle school, formerly Juan Crespi Middle School, was renamed in 2021 to honor Reid Soskin, who, Principal Jason Lau said, serves as a role model and an inspiration to the students.

“Your legacy reminds us that it’s never too early or too late to make a difference,” he told Reid Soskin in front of the small crowd assembled in the school’s library for her party on Monday.

While she doesn’t consider herself a “Rosie,” proclaimed a display documenting Reid Soskin’s life at the school’s library, Reid Soskin made her own contributions to the World War II effort at home in the Bay Area as a file clerk for shipyard workers in Richmond. But she and her former husband — who would together go on to open Reid’s Records, one of the first Black-owned record stores in Oakland and one of the oldest in the state before it closed in 2019 — faced considerable racism, driving her into politics and civil rights work.

She would later lead the creation of the Richmond site, which opened in 2000. Thanks to her efforts, the museum highlights the wartime contributions of the East Bay’s nonwhite residents and the struggles they faced to win their own freedom at home.

Reid Soskin said it wasn’t until her mid-50s, after she experienced the loss of her father and two former husbands within the span of just three months, that her life took a turn toward political activism — and to fully embracing who she is.

“I think I felt lost for a while,” she said. “I didn’t know that I was going to come back. And then I came back.”

“I came back as Betty, and I’ve been able to work as Betty ever since,” she continued. “I was defined by myself and that was really something.”

Reid Soskin said working for the park service “was probably the best thing I ever did. I felt as if I were meant to be here, and I was doing exactly as I was intended to do.”

West Contra Costa Unified School District Superintendent Cheryl Cotton said she had the opportunity to see Reid Soskin at work as a park ranger when she and her son visited the Rosie the Riveter park as part of a school group.

“I can’t imagine how many lives she’s touched and really inspired,” Cotton said. “I think that the world needs to know that great things come from Richmond. Great things come from our communities — and she is one of the greatest.”

But it’s Reid Soskin’s music and songwriting that inspires eighth grader Farahzareh Parvar, who plays the flute.

“I do music myself, and I think I just look up to her,” Parvar said. Reid Soskin used her music to reflect on her life and her generation’s fight for civil liberties, but kept her songs private for nearly a half-century.

Reid Soskin said if today’s students take anything from her life’s story, it’s to keep pushing themselves and others forward.

“I hope that they continue to ask questions, and that they never settle for the answers,” she said.