If you've ever visited the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park on the Richmond waterfront, chances are you have heard of its most celebrated ranger. At age 94, Betty Reid Soskin is the country's oldest park ranger. The talks she gives several times a week pack the house, and she helped to shape the scope of the museum though her personal recollections. During the war, Soskin was a clerk in a Jim Crow union near the Richmond shipyards. It was a time of segregation, a time when not all women could become Rosies. If you want to see Betty Reid Soskin in person - she’ll be the the keynote speaker at an upcoming benefit dinner for the Rosie the Riveter Trust Saturday (4.9) in Richmond.
Betty Reid Soskin: I knew that what gets remembered is a function of who's in the room doing the remembering.
This piece was produced by KALW’s Lezak Shallat and engineered by Colin Peden. If you have a story you’d like to share, you can visit the StoryCorps booth at the San Francisco Public Library.