Betty Reid Soskin: A World War II Homefront History
August 16, 2015 - 1:30pm-4:00pmCome hear Betty Reid Soskin recall Richmond and the Bay Area during World War II. This exceptional speaker and homefront hero will show a short movie of Richmond during the years 1942-1945 and follow it up with an inspiring talk that you must experience. Betty is currently a park ranger at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Homefront National Park in Richmond, and was once employed in the Richmond shipyards during World War II. Her talk will move you.Event Category:
Just showered and dressed for a presentation at the Berkeley Main Library at 1:30 this afternoon, and expect to see old friends in that audience. Having lived in Berkeley for many years, I've left a mark on it as we all do in those places where we've shared lives -- and it surely has left its mark on me. I never thought I'd be happy living anywhere else, but I'm firmly planted now in Richmond, and think of the city as home. But maybe home is wherever the heart is at any moment in time. If so, I've had many, and this is only the latest version.
That 20 years in the suburbs -- painful though it was at times -- probably provided the greatest and deepest growth, and friends with whom those years were shared left their mark on my life as in no other period. Strange. Maybe that was the take-away in exchange for the confidence and security acquired as the result. The pain may have been well worth it. I'm still spinning off those years. They've given me the needed balance to continue building on the foundation provided by the early years of woman-building that started when I was six, with Papa George as mentor.
These recent years of connecting the dots and knitting together decades of experiences -- having retained enough accumulated wisdom to articulate that -- is something I could never have anticipated.
But then, maybe that book has been thoughtfully written, and I've not yet discovered it ... .
