Betty Reid Soskin, who retired in 2022 as the National Park Service’s oldest active ranger at the age of 100, has died.
Soskin’s family announced at the weekend that their beloved relative had died aged 104. She became a park ranger at 85, having always been a pioneer in the workplace.
“This morning on the winter solstice, our mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Betty Reid Soskin, passed away peacefully at her home in Richmond, California … she led a fully packed life and was ready to leave,” the family said to NBC in a statement.
Soskin had worked at the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front national historical park, where she shared with visitors her experiences working on the US home front in the second world war.
She was a file clerk in a segregated union hall in the San Francisco Bay area and, later, during her time as a ranger, Soskin sought to shed light on the experiences of women of color during the second world war.
“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 at the time in a statement from the NPS announcing her retirement.
Soskin became a park ranger at the age of 85 and featured in the Guardian’s special report series A new start after 60.
