Betty Reid Soskin, Nation’s Oldest National Park Service Ranger and Civil Rights Trailblazer, Dies at 104
Written by b87fm on 12/23/2025
Betty Reid Soskin, the pioneering National Park Service ranger whose life spanned more than a century of American history, has died. She was 104.
Soskin passed away peacefully Sunday morning at her home in Richmond, California, surrounded by family, according to NBC News.
“This morning on the Winter Solstice, our mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, Betty Reid Soskin, passed away peacefully at her home in Richmond, CA at 104 years old,” her family said in a statement. They added that she lived a “fully packed life” and was “ready to leave.”
Widely celebrated as the nation’s oldest active National Park Service ranger, Soskin’s path to the Park Service was anything but traditional. She didn’t begin her NPS career until her 80s, following years of advocacy and historical research focused on amplifying the overlooked experiences of Black Americans during World War II.
Her work began through a grant-supported project examining African American contributions to the WWII home front. That effort led to a temporary role with the National Park Service at age 84, and in 2011 she became a permanent ranger. Soskin officially retired in 2022.
Long before her time with the Park Service, Soskin was already deeply engaged in public service and cultural preservation. During World War II, she worked as a file clerk in the segregated union hall of the Boilermakers, an experience that shaped her understanding of race, labor, and systemic inequities, according to the NPS.
In 1945, she and her husband, Mel Reid, opened Reid’s Records, one of the first Black-owned music stores in the United States. The shop became a cultural landmark in the Bay Area and remained open for more than 70 years before closing in 2019.
In the early 2000s, Soskin played a pivotal role in shaping the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond. Through a PG&E-funded grant, she helped uncover and document the long-neglected stories of African Americans who contributed to the wartime home front. That work eventually placed her behind the ranger desk, where she led public programs rooted in lived experience rather than textbook history.
National attention followed in 2013 during the federal government shutdown, when Soskin was widely recognized as the country’s oldest active park ranger. Despite the attention, she remained focused on education, using her platform to bring nuance and truth to conversations about American history rather than engaging in political spectacle.
In her later years, Soskin faced health challenges, including a stroke in 2019 that required months of rehabilitation. True to form, she returned to work in 2020 before eventually stepping away from the Park Service.
Her family has encouraged those wishing to honor her legacy to support the Betty Reid Soskin Middle School and to help complete her documentary, Sign My Name to Freedom, which chronicles her extraordinary life and enduring impact.
