WWII Dispute Again Divides Town

By Lianne Hart

May 31, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

THREE RIVERS, Texas — Four years after he died in combat during World War II, Pvt. Felix Longoria’s body was taken from a temporary grave in the Philippines and shipped home to South Texas.

His widow, Beatrice, went to the town’s only funeral home and asked the owner, Tom Kennedy, to open the chapel for the wake. What happened next is so disputed that a recent move to honor the soldier’s memory has renewed a 55-year-old quarrel and set the town on edge.

“You cannot imagine the stir this has caused,” said Patty Reagan, a lifelong resident and Kennedy family friend. “All the old wounds have been reopened.”

At the center of the dispute was the Rice Funeral Home, which handled burials from all parts of town. The chapel was open to whites, but its availability to the town’s Latinos -- such as the Longorias -- was unclear.

According to Beatrice Longoria, Kennedy denied chapel services for her husband because “the whites won’t like it.” Kennedy contended that he merely asked Longoria to hold the wake in her home to avoid a public scene with what he described as her estranged in-laws.

What followed were six weeks of turmoil, the intervention of then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson and a hard-to-shake reputation for racism in the town. Historians say the incident helped unify Latinos and bring national attention to the Mexican American civil rights movement. But many residents -- most of them white -- believe political opportunists twisted the words of a good man to advance a cause.

This town of 1,805 at the juncture of three rivers between Corpus Christi and San Antonio bills itself as a fishing and hunting destination. Early in the 1900s, it was home to a glass factory and a natural gas refinery. Like many towns then, it had separate cemeteries for whites and Latinos.

The lingering power of the funeral controversy surfaced at a recent City Council meeting -- a tense, standing-room-only affair where a proposal to rename the post office after Longoria was on the table.

Carolina Quintanilla, Longoria’s sister, and Susan Zamzow, Kennedy’s daughter, were in the audience. As the evening wore on, it became clear that more than the name of a post office was at stake.

Felix Longoria was a truck driver, married and the father of a young daughter when his draft papers arrived in 1944. Seven months later, at age 25, he was killed by enemy fire on the island of Luzon.

His wife, Beatrice, was young, shy and unlikely to seek the spotlight, her relatives say. But when the funeral home refused chapel services, she let her sister call Hector Garcia, a surgeon from Corpus Christi who recently had founded the American GI Forum, a civil rights organization.

Documents archived at Texas A&M; University detail how events unfolded, starting with a call from Garcia to Kennedy about the wake. Garcia’s secretary, Gladys Bucher, listened in and took notes.

Kennedy, who was white, said that “it doesn’t make any difference” that Longoria was a veteran, according to Bucher’s notes. “You know how the Latin people get drunk and lay around all the time. The last time we let them use the chapel, they got all drunk and we just can’t control them -- so the white people object to it, and we just can’t let them use it.”

Garcia then contacted a local reporter, George Groh, who also called Kennedy. “We never made a practice of letting Mexicans use the chapel,” Kennedy was said to have told Groh, “and we don’t want to start now.”

“I warned Kennedy that he ‘had hold of a hot potato’ but he seemed to believe that the whole thing amounted to very little,” Groh later wrote in a notarized statement for a commission investigating the incident. The next day, Kennedy told Groh that he would “discourage” the chapel service but not refuse if the family insisted.

“He did not then deny his statements of the previous night. Later he did retract his original statements,” Groh wrote.

Garcia organized a protest meeting -- over 1,000 people attended -- and the national media descended. Faced with a public relations mess, city leaders blamed “outsiders” like Garcia for distorting the truth for publicity. The Chamber of Commerce adopted a resolution deploring “misconstrued” facts that “grossly misrepresented” the town.

Kennedy told his version of the story in the Three Rivers newspaper. He had heard of a conflict between Beatrice Longoria and her in-laws, he said, and worried “there may be some trouble at the funeral service.” That’s why he asked Longoria to hold the wake at her house, he said. “I did not at any time refuse to bury him or allow the use of the chapel because he was Latin American.”

As the claims and counterclaims flew, Johnson sent a telegram to Garcia, offering to arrange a burial for Longoria at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The next day, Kennedy sent a letter to Beatrice Longoria offering use of his chapel. “We are only too glad to be of service,” it read.

Longoria was buried at Arlington as his family, Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson stood under a gray February sky.

A Texas state legislative commission, in a 4-5 vote, later found no discrimination by Kennedy.

Longoria’s story faded elsewhere, but in South Texas the memories remained. Two years ago, Santiago Hernandez, a federal prison guard from Corpus Christi, began a campaign to rename the Three Rivers post office. Hernandez won the support of former San Antonio Mayor Henry G. Cisneros, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American GI Forum. Longoria’s widow, who has Alzheimer’s disease, did not participate.

In February, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said he would put the proposal before Congress if residents supported the idea. Which is why City Hall was packed last month as the City Council considered the measure.

The room was quiet as Zamzow faced the crowd to speak against the proposal and defend her father.

“He buried Hispanics before this happened and he buried them after,” she said. Zamzow and others suggested honoring all veterans with a memorial. “It would be a slight” if they were excluded, she said.

A Latino man stood and brushed off the idea as missing the point. “Show the country that you have the guts to name the post office after Pvt. Longoria,” he said.

After deliberating, the council announced it would not oppose renaming the post office to honor Longoria’s service.

Longoria’s sister stepped outside the building and wept; she vowed to guard the family name. “I’m hoping and praying that it will all end now. I believe this is it,” she said.

Zamzow also wiped tears from her eyes, but had no comment. Reagan has begun a letter-writing campaign to let Doggett know that “local people don’t want this,” she said. “We like the name the way it is.”

The resolution did not contain any reference to racial injustice or the 1949 controversy; Hernandez said he planned to lobby the federal government for a plaque explaining the civil rights significance of the case.

Patrick Carroll, a historian at Texas A&M;, believes renaming the post office will “help heal the community.” But the dispute over what happened all those years ago is far from settled.

“People believe what their fathers and grandfathers told them: that there was no discrimination,” he said. “I don’t think it will ever change.”