New York, NY (The 74)

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Last fall, Natalie Peitsmeyer sold her house in Colorado, said goodbye to a community she'd known for decades and started a dream education job in Kansas.

She became a park guide at the Fort Scott National Historic Site, a military outpost that was instrumental in the nation's westward expansion and played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Peitsmeyer had just retired from the Cherry Creek School District southeast of Denver where she worked for 30 years as a science teacher and saw the National Park Service role as the next chapter in her long career teaching children.

Peitsmeyer, 59, was in the middle of developing new programming around the disappearance of monarch butterflies w

See Full Page