Remembering the iconic National Park Service ranger

She was a true trailblazer and an inspiration to thousands.

Yet not everyone knew her name or fully understood the impact of her life’s work.

Now, we take a moment to honor Betty Reid Soskin.

She was the oldest living National Park Service ranger until her passing on December 21, 2025, at the remarkable age of 104.

Retired at age 100

Surrounded by loved ones, Betty Reid Soskin’s final moments reflected the way she lived her life: full, intentional, and deeply meaningful. In a statement released Sunday morning, her family said she had “led a fully packed life and was ready to leave.”

And what a life it was.

A trailblazing civil rights activist, historian, and storyteller, Soskin spent more than a century breaking barriers and reclaiming forgotten history. She officially retired from the National Park Service in 2022 at age 100, earning the distinction of being the agency’s oldest active ranger, but her impact stretched far beyond any title.

Long before donning a ranger uniform, Soskin helped shape the future of Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond. She worked closely with the city and the NPS to develop its management plan, ensuring that the stories of African Americans and other people of color, so often left out of WWII narratives, were finally told.

Her journey with the Park Service didn’t even begin until she was 84.

Through a grant funded by PG&E, Soskin helped uncover untold stories of Black Americans on the WWII home front, a project that led to her temporary, and later permanent, role with the NPS. Her powerful interpretive programs transformed how visitors understood America’s past, shining a long-overdue spotlight on voices history had ignored.

Fleeing the Jim Crow South

Born Betty Charbonnet was born in Detroit in 1921. She grew up in a Cajun-Creole, African American family that relocated to New Orleans and then Oakland after the devastating Great Flood of 1927. Her family’s migration followed the path of Black railroad workers who moved west seeking opportunity, and freedom from the crushing racism of the Jim Crow South.

Her memories stretched across nearly every chapter of modern American history. She remembered ferry boats crossing the Bay before bridges existed, Oakland’s airport as little more than two hangars, Amelia Earhart’s final flight, and the devastating Port Chicago explosion of 1944.

During World War II, Soskin worked as a file clerk in a segregated union hall. In 1945, she and her husband founded Reid’s Records, one of the first Black-owned music stores in the country, a cultural cornerstone that remained open for more than 70 years.

Her commitment to public service never wavered. She went on to work in local and state government, serving as a staff member to a Berkeley city council member and as a field representative for California legislators, always advocating for equity, inclusion, and truth.

One of the defining highlights of her remarkable life came in 2015, when President Barack Obama personally invited her to light the National Christmas Tree — honoring the moment by presenting her with a commemorative coin bearing the presidential seal.

”I look at it now and it seems almost unreal. It was something I never had dreamed and it turned out to be wonderful,” Soskin said in 2021.

Followed politics very closely

Right up until her final days, Soskin remained deeply engaged in the world around her — especially politics. In an interview with The Guardian, she spoke candidly about how she viewed the current political climate in the United States.

Soskin made it clear she was far from disengaged. “I follow politics very closely,” she said during a video call from her home in Richmond, where she lived with her daughter, Di’ara. Reflecting on the long arc of history she had witnessed, she added: “Even going through the 50s and the 60s with civil rights, that was all [progress].”

But she worried that momentum had been lost. “I don’t feel as if that’s so now,” she said. Speaking about the Trump era, Soskin didn’t hold back: “It’s seemed to me that [Trump] has no idea what he’s doing. I think we’ve lost our sense of direction.”

For someone who had spent more than a century fighting for justice and truth, that uncertainty was deeply troubling. “And that’s terrifying to me,” she said, “because I’m going to leave the world in such a shape.”

Betty Reid Soskin passed away peacefully at her home in Richmond, California, at the age of 104, her family confirmed on Sunday.

A public memorial will be announced at a later date. In lieu of flowers, her family has asked that donations be made to Betty Reid Soskin Middle School or toward completing her documentary film, Sign My Name to Freedom — a fitting title for a woman who spent her life doing exactly that.