Bay Area comes together to honor the life, legacy of beloved park ranger Betty Reid Soskin

By John Ramos

The Bay Area learned in December about the passing of legendary Bay Area Park Ranger Betty Reid Soskin, but they waited until Sunday to hold a public tribute to her.  That may seem like a long time to wait, but if Soskin taught us anything, it’s that it’s never too late to celebrate a life.

The Henry J Kaiser Center was filled with close friends, many of whom never actually met her. Her son, Bob Reid, said that’s the way she made people feel for all 104 years of her amazing life.

“You know, my mother, her death was an accomplishment,” he told the audience. “My mother has wanted to be gone for quite a while. She wanted to go. She was ready to go. And she went. My mother ‘squoze’ out all the life there was in that body. And left none left.”

Soskin was a young woman when WWII drew people to Richmond to work in the home front factories and shipyards.  She experienced a lot of the racial and gender discrimination of the day, and when she later got involved with the establishment of the Rosie The Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, her boss, Tom Leatherman, said she gave the park a reality check that was missing from most other sites in the country.

“She added her personal story. She added her perspective on what she lived through, what she experienced during that time, and shared that experience. Which is something that hadn’t been shared in the past,” said Leatherman. “I worked with her very closely and those are some of the best experiences of my life.”

Later in life, she owned Reid’s Records in Oakland, a place that, to the Black community, became much more than just a record store. Inez Price remembered it well.

“It was a time when the Black Panther movement was going on,” she said.  “And you could go to Reid’s Records and Betty just had this spirit about herself.  You know, she was militant.  A lot of people may not know that about her, but she was just that calm, cool, collective spirit. You know what I’m saying?  And it just resonated with everybody.”

Soskin suffered a lot of demons in her early life, but then, as she aged, she seemed to gain a new perspective, enjoying each day to the fullest. That’s why she joined the Park Service at age 85, becoming the oldest park ranger in U.S. history.

“My mother was many people.  My mother reinvented herself several times,” said son Bob.  “She changed communities, changed jobs, changed marriages.  She taught me that life is something that you continually invent.”

It’s a message that her fellow rangers took to heart.

“My favorite thing to tell people when they say, ‘Oh, I wanted to be a ranger my whole life,’ I say it’s never too late,” said former supervisory ranger Elizabeth Tucker.  “Because my colleague, Betty Reid Soskin, started at the age of 85!  So, it’s never too late to have a happy childhood!”

And that’s why in 2021, at the age of 100, Betty so loved the idea of having a middle school renamed for her.

“It means I’m cast into the next generation…and that is something,” she said.  “I don’t think it’s possible to overestimate what that means to someone who’s going.”

She may be gone now, but those who knew her came to realize that it also wasn’t possible to overestimate Betty Reid Soskin.