Felix Longoria, a Three Rivers native and Private First Class in the U.S. Army, enlisted in Nov. 1944 and was killed during the Battle of Luzon in the Philippines. After the war, his parents received his posthumous medals, and his wife and daughter moved to Corpus Christi. When his remains were repatriated in 1948, his widow Beatrice received a telegram requesting a burial site, and in Jan. 1949 she met with the owner and undertaker of Three Rivers' only funeral home to discuss arrangements. The men refused to host a wake in the funeral home chapel and suggested the family home instead, a decision widely interpreted as racially based amid commonplace and legally codified separation between Anglo and Mexican-American citizens. Beatrice and her family then turned to Dr. Hector Garcia, who had formed the American G.I. Forum in Corpus Christi the previous year to promote rights for returning veterans. Garcia contacted state and federal officials and members of national radio and news media for assistance, and U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson arranged Longoria's burial in Arlington National Cemetery, where family members and government officials from the U.S. and Mexico attended his funeral on Feb. 16, 1949. The Longoria Affair drew widespread coverage in the U.S. and international press, prompted an official investigation by the Texas Legislature, advanced public debate on the status and rights of Mexican-Americans and military veterans, and helped bring the American G.I. Forum and Sen. Johnson national recognition in civil rights causes and politics in the ensuing decades.