From: David Barna

Sent: 01/16/2009 01:30 PM EST
Subject: National Park Service new release: FORMER ROSIE THE RIVETER TO WITNESS INAUGURATION

For Immediate Release
Holly Bundock, Public Affairs Officer
Date:  January 16, 2009

FORMER ROSIE THE RIVETER TO WITNESS INAUGURATION

Betty Reid Soskin, 87, will be the guest of Congressman George Miller, at Tuesday’s Inauguration in Washington, D.C.

Soskin is a uniformed National Park Service (NPS) ranger, working at Richmond, California’s Rosie the Riveter/ World War II Home Front National Historical Park.  She is a former “Rosie,” having served in an auxillary Union Hall, created to serve African American shipyard workers (as the unions were segregated).  The Kaiser shipyards constructed 747 Liberty Ships in Richmond during the war years, one of the stories of this new NPS area.

The nation is finally ready for the long lost conversations and untold stories,” Soskin said today, “and after many years of preparatory experience in public service, I’m now a National Park Service ranger… I’m helping shape a new urban national park… This park supports the telling of the more recent dramatic chapters in the story of how we arrived at this memorable Inauguration…”

Soskin leaves this weekend for Washington, D.C.  In addition to the Inaugural event, she plans on a tour of the WWII Memorial, and visiting the newly reopened Smithsonian Museum of American History to see exhibits on Rosie the Riveter, the WWII Home Front and Japanese American Internment.

Rosie the Riveter / World War II National Historical Park is a vision of Congressman Miller who shepherded this park through its legislative enactment.  The park captures the untold stories of the everyday heroes who worked on the home front during the war and how the nation mobilized its spirit and industrial might. The NPS does not own any of the buildings or land that make up this park; instead the NPS is working with the city of Richmond, other owners of sites, and the community to protect the scattered resources of this park. These include the Rosie the Riveter Memorial, Ford Assembly Building (future site of the park’s visitor center), the first day care centers, the Kaiser Field Hospital, Shipyard #3, and sites along the water front.  Soskin is one of rangers who works - providing tours, telling her personal WWII story, and encouraging others to contribute their stories to the park’s collection of oral histories.

Soskin has seen the population of Richmond swell from 24,000 before WWII to over 100,000 by the end of the war, and she has also experienced the upheaval and social changes subsequent to the war.  She maintains a blog (http://cbreaux.blogspot.com) which details her personal history of over 60years, dealing with issues of race and segregation; changes throughout the greater Bay Area from the boom time of war through loss of industries, jobs and opportunity for many post-war; and Richmond’s current renaissance as a leader in the emerging green economy and the site of the new national park.

She also has produced “Of Lost Conversations and Untold Stories,” a DVD she calls “dense with information on the African American story” and available on YouTube.com.  She wrote and narrated this for the purpose of starting spirited conversations at public meetings for the NPS.

Soskin is available for interviews at 510-220-6909 or at Betty_Soskin@nps.gov