Betty Reid Soskin retired from a full-time job with the National Park Service just months after celebrating her 100th birthday.
Joining the Park Service at age 85, she started working for them full time in 2011, at age 89 at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, CA. There, she shared her own experiences working on the WWII homefront.
“To be a part of helping to mark the place where that dramatic trajectory of my own life, combined with others of my generation, will influence the future by the footprints we’ve left behind has been incredible,” Soskin said in the NPS’s statement.
According to CNN: “As a park ranger, Soskin led public programs with visitors and shared her own personal experiences of World War II. And she worked to highlight the untold stories of African Americans and other people of color during the war. “Being a primary source in the sharing of that history — my history — and giving shape to a new national park has been exciting and fulfilling,” said Soskin. “It has proven to bring meaning to my final years.”
Soskin founded one of the first Black-owned music stores, Reid’s Records, with her husband, which was in business for 75 years, before joining the NPS. – WTF fun fact
Source: “America’s oldest national park ranger retires at age 100” — CNN