A Park Ranger at 85

That's how old Betty Reid Soskin was when she joined the National Park Service, first as a consultant in 2003, then as a ranger in 2007. She celebrated her one-hundredth birthday on September 22. Soskin is the oldest active ranger in the National Park Service. Tom Leatherman, the park’s superintendent, said Soskin has had a profound impact on the park. “She has been fundamental to us being able to tell a more complete story,” he explained. “She has become a symbol of how we can do a better job of incorporating stories that haven’t been shared before.”

And that's what she does - tells stories. She has made it her mission to stay in the proverbial room — which, in her case, was in the park’s visitor center, where she has sat on a stool countless times, sharing her story with a room full of strangers. Since becoming a ranger, Soskin was awarded the Silver Service Medallion by the National WWII Museum, she was presented with a commemorative coin from President Barack Obama, and she has written a memoir, called “Sign My Name to Freedom,” which is currently being made into a documentary film.