In 2021, I joined a book club organized by James Edward Mills through his Joy Tripp Project. I had begun following James after reading his book, The Adventure Gap, and when he announced he was going to have a book club with authors writing about topics related to the outdoors and then having discussions with their authors, I was very interested.
The book club turned out to be an opportunity to read what are now some of my favorite books, like Gloryland by Shelton Johnson and Planet Walker by John Francis. And I just finished another meaningful biography, Sign My Name To Freedom: A Memoir Of A Pioneering Life, by Betty Reid Soskin. I am embarrassed that it took me so long to finish but my goal for 2025 is more reading so I am quickly making it through all the books I have had in digital format and by the bedstand for a while now.
You may know Betty from her fame as a park ranger at the Rosie The Riveter WW2 Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California. Now that I have read her book, I know she is so much more than just someone who represented the National Parks Service well into her 90s.
From her book website:
Betty Charbonnet Reid Soskin is an author, composer and singer, social and political activist, entrepreneur, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, historian, blogger, public speaker, and National Park Service Ranger whose remarkable life spans the great American fault lines of the 20th and early 21st centuries.
The Rosie The Riveter WW2 Home Front National Historical Park is an urban installment that celebrates the contributions and sacrifices of American civilians on the home front during World War II. Although Betty does not consider herself a “Rosie” because that position was reserved for white women at the time so her work was elsewhere in the fight, she was instrumental in creating a more complete picture of what it looked like for the diverse populations who helped the Allies win the war from home when she asked to be involved in planning meetings in the early 2000s.
Do national parks in cities like Richmond count as outdoor spaces? Are national parks based more on our country’s history just as important? National Geographic writes:
According to Soskin, urban parks like Rosie the Riveter help bring national parks to people who may not otherwise be able to get to remote places like Yosemite or Yellowstone. It is not lost on her that tax dollars pay for U.S. national parks, yet many of the country’s citizens cannot access them.
Soskin argues that urban parks are as important as our wild spaces, because “the urban spaces combined with nature tells the American story. Our parks are our American story.”
If national parks are about preservation, than they are as vital to understanding the American story, if not more, than just experiencing a pretty landscape outdoors. The parks have not always done a great job of accuracy or offering a complete picture of history but with people like Betty behind the scenes we not only include more Americans in that portrayal but it helps all of us to better understand current day events and our future.
One of the things I loved most about listening to her read the book was being able to get a sense of who she was in her own words. With the history of her life covering almost a century, she is able to put a real face to many of the events we only read about in history books (or maybe don’t read about). All the experiences that shaped both her and our country, how far we have come and how history really does repeat itself.
That’s what’s so interesting to me, that one of the things that comes with getting older is losing the need to be that concrete, that you learn to live comfortably with conflicting truths, that when I was younger, something had to be this way or that way, but now they can be both.
The zoom for Betty was in September of 2023 and I had an opportunity to participate when I had just started reading her book. We didn’t discuss the memoir in great detail, James was mostly interested in hearing Betty’s perspective on current day topics and what she hoped for the future of today’s youth. We were also joined by another park ranger, Shelton Johnson! If you are lucky enough to have someone in your life who has lived this long, you know what a treat it is to hear them share their stories with you. And how they will direct the conversation more than you might have planned.
I continue to follow Betty on Instagram as her family and supporters work to have her movie become a reality while she is still with us to see it. I also look forward to one day visiting Richmond, California and the Rosie The Riveter national park to learn more about that part of our country’s history.
If you are interested in learning more about Betty Reid Soskin, these are just a few of the articles you can find about Betty’s complicated and fascinating life:
- Berkleyside: Betty Reid Soskin: The Extraordinary Life of The Nation’s Oldest Park Ranger
- California Humanities: Sign My Name To Freedom
- At 102 Year Old, Betty Reid Soskin Revisits Her Music From The Civil Rights Era
- Oldest Park Ranger Overcomes Assault, Embraces History
You can read more from Betty herself on her long running blog:
And we must remember, that we are not living in the same reality — and rarely if ever has that been true. The America that I’ve lived in bears little resemblance to that of many others. That’s probably as it should be. I don’t argue with that. It’s from those variables that our richness as a Nation is forged. But the variables should not rise from the inequities and injustices embedded in a flawed social system that bears the awful legacy of slavery, but from the adjustments and corrections we’ve lived through as a people guided by our founding documents and a heritage of freedom that ensues therefrom — as we continue the process of forming our “more perfect Union.”
You can learn more about her book at Sign My Name To Freedom Book and there is an audio preview on YouTube. Details on the movie of her life can be found on the website Sign My Name To Freedom. After listening to her tell her story in the audio book, I am looking forward to seeing it come to life on the screen!
Here is a trailer:
Editor’s note: I also moved from Goodreads to Storygraph and I am loving how it helps me set goals and graph my reading habits. If you are looking for a fun (non-Amazon owned) way to keep track of your reading, I recommend it.
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Interesting. My husband’s mother was a “Rosie the Riveter”. I am reading the book “Horse” right now that tells the story of a famous racehorse from the 1850’s. There are several related stories going on in different time periods, including the enslaved groom of the horse, the owner of the horse, and some people (a black man and an a white woman) in the 20th century doing research on a painting of the horse. Many different experiences and perspectives.
That book sounds interesting, I will add it to my “to read” list!