[3] Towards the end of her life, Scottie wrote a final coda about her parents to a biographer: "I have never been able to buy the notion that it was my father's drinking which led her to the sanitarium.

Seventeen months before her graduation,[17] her father F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack due to occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis at 44 years old.

[18] On learning of her father's death, Scottie telephoned his mistress Sheilah Graham from Vassar and asked that she not attend the funeral for the sake of social propriety.

"[20]After her matriculation from Vassar in June 1942,[17] Scottie worked as a publicist for Radio City Music Hall and as a researcher for Time magazine.

[1] During World War II, she contributed to the Talk of the Town section of The New Yorker, wrote nightclub reviews, and also published her first piece of fiction there, titled The Stocking Present.

[1] In February, 1943, amid World War II, Scottie married Lieutenant Samuel Jackson "Jack" Lanahan in New York.

[3] In the wake of Nancy Milford's biography of her mother,[26] partisan scholars of Zelda frequently depicted Scott Fitzgerald as a domineering husband who drove his wife insane.

[27] She particularly objected to revisionist depictions of her mother as "the classic 'put down' wife, whose efforts to express her artistic nature were thwarted by a typically male chauvinist husband".

[28] In contrast, Scottie insisted: "My father greatly appreciated and encouraged his wife's unusual talents and ebullient imagination.

"[28]Towards the end of her life, Scottie wrote a final coda about her parents to a biographer: "I have never been able to buy the notion that it was my father's drinking which led her to the sanitarium.

"[3] During this period of her life, Scottie also collaborated with her news reporting colleague Winzola McLendon to research and write the 1970 book, Don't Quote Me: Washington Newswomen & the Power Society.

[29][30][31][32] In 1973, when Fitzgerald was legally separated from husband Grove Smith, she moved from Washington, D.C. to her mother's home town of Montgomery, Alabama.

"[33] Upon learning of this fact, Scottie felt both embarrassment and guilt and for the remainder of her life devoted herself to voter outreach programs in Alabama.

[33] Several months after Fitzgerald's relocation, she attended a party in Montgomery when she was informed via long-distance telephone call of her son's suicide.

[25] Despite ill-health, Fitzgerald remained active in the state Democratic Party in Alabama,[2] and she worked with Walter Mondale during his campaign trips to Montgomery over the years.