The soldier's widow tried to make arrangements with the director of the funeral home in Three Rivers to hold a wake for Longoria at the funeral home. Tom Kennedy, the funeral home director, would not allow this. He said that because the late soldier was a "Mexican," "the whites would not like it." He repeated this sentiment in phone conversations with Dr. Hector P. Garcia and reporter, George Groh, of the "Corpus Christi Caller." Kennedy was willing to set up a wake at the Longoria home, in the segregated area across the railroad tracks from the white section of town, as was the customary treatment of Mexican Americans by the Three Rivers community. Longoria was to be re-interred in the Longoria Cemetery (purchased by his father in 1925), which abutted the West side of the town's all-white cemetery. This portion of the cemetery, separated by a fence at that time, was reserved by the Three Rivers community for the Mexican Americans.