98-Year-Old Betty Reid Soskin Is America's Oldest Park Ranger And She Wants To Keep Going

Mar 07, 2020 by apost team

With an expansive 98 years of life experience behind her, Betty Reid Soskin is proving that the requirements for retirement are relative. As the oldest park ranger in America, her work ethic should serve as a lodestar to everyone. Amazingly, she is not planning on calling it quits anytime in the near future. To honor her impressive dedication and fortitude, let’s take a look at her awe-inspiring story.

As an African-American woman who was born in Detroit, Soskin was one of just six black graduates from the Class of 1938 at Castlemont High School in Oakland. By the 1950s, she had entered into a marriage and relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, reports The National WWII Museum. Her residency was in the mostly white neighborhood of Walnut Creek, which meant she had to endure egregious acts of racism on a regular basis.

In addition to slurs and slanderous retorts, she even became accustomed to frequent threats of violence, reports ABC7. Her accounts of dealing with segregation are painfully real, and they provide an illuminating point-of-view pertaining to the progress of civilization at large.

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Longevity runs in the Soskin family; in fact, Betty’s great-grandmother lived to be 102-years-old. However, an extended lifespan is not the only inheritance she received from her maternal lineage. As it stands, Soskin credits a long line of strong women for imbuing her with courage and willpower. Indeed, these traits have carried her far, and she was even granted a ceremonial coin by President Barack Obama.

In describing her meeting with the nation’s first black leader, Soskin didn’t hold back her praise in an interview with NBC Bay Area: “The president is a thoroughly evolved young man. He’s amazing, and he and his wife are what we all need to be.”

In 2015, when she was still a spring chicken at the youthful age of 93, Soskin profoundly detailed one of the major life lessons that she learned across so much time. Mainly, she emphasized the importance of cultivating self-assured determination, which she managed to do later in life:

“I wish I'd had confidence when the young Betty needed it to navigate through the hazards of everyday life on the planet, but maybe I'm better able to benefit from having it now.” When asked to expand on this sentiment, she stated to SFist, “I have the maturity to value it and the audacity to wield it for those things held dear."

To acquire more of her phenomenal perspective, you can read "Sign My Name For Freedom," which is her remarkable 2018 memoir. To this day, she is certain that her life mission isn’t complete: "I haven’t any idea what it is. I have no idea, except that it’s there. It’s something that I am to accomplish, and I haven’t done it yet," she told the San Francisco Chronicle.

In her current position with the National Park Service, Soskin oversees tours while providing informative lectures on the historical value of certain sites. Until recently, she was still conducting educational wilderness adventures five days a week. Unfortunately, she reduced her commitments to one day weekly after needing rehabilitation from a stroke. In regards to her health, she merely exclaimed, "I'm fine. I'm not quite the person that I was."

It is truly rare to witness an individual who serves as an example of living history. The societal transformation that can occur across a century is nearly impossible to comprehend without going through it firsthand. There is so much knowledge that can only be gained through experience, which means Soskin must be one of the wisest humans among us. Share this wisdom with everyone you know.