War and Post-War

Natalie’s anxieties over Adolph Hitler and the war building in Europe began dominating her correspondence by the mid-1930s. In 1940, a year before Pearl Harbor, she sought re-entry into the Red Cross for overseas work in war hospitals. Her age at the time, over 50, made her ineligible for service. Yet she organized DeGaulle Clubs, led fundraising efforts for refugees, and joined the Mexican medical corps. Finally, after U.S. entry into the war, the Red Cross recruited her for service. Natalie became one of only three Red Cross workers to serve in both wars, her overseas service continuing for three more years after the war.

As the war progressed, Natalie served in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany as her mobile evacuation hospital moved with the invading forces of the U.S. 7th Army. She tended to the wounded soldiers, refugees and concentration camp survivors. She witnessed the collapse of Nazi Germany, then boarded a troopship for the Pacific expecting to accompany U.S. forces in the invasion of Japan. Though the war ended with the atomic bomb dropping on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Natalie remained in devastated Asia, serving in the Philippines and Japan, as well as two years in Korea as upheaval and war threatened the troubled country.

Upon her return from service, Natalie led a nationwide fundraising campaign for Newcomb College. She then returned to Taxco, her school, and her stimulating intellectual and social life there. Here she reigned, in the words of Mexico historian Lesley Simpson, as the grande dame of Taxco, its social and philanthropic leader. Natalie died in 1957.

Perhaps no one on earth better understood the tragedy and heroism of this historic period, more immersed themselves within its challenges, or more effectively identified, embraced and took responsibility for the great causes at hand. Natalie always seemed to be present where intriguing events occurred, a witness upon the major world events, calamities, personalities of her era. Natalie Scott made these historic moments her passion, articulated what transpired in remarkably high quality journalism. She adopted them as her personal causes, as one small woman with great initiative and inner joy she changed the madness of the world around her.