Bert Corona - Marriage

Marriage

On August 2, 1941, Corona and Blanche Taff, a Jewish-American labor organizer he met during the a United Auto Workers drive to organize Los Angeles aviation workers, eloped to Yuma, Arizona. According to Corona, their cultural differences were an issue, but their union was a natural one given the circumstances:

In the labor and radical circles I was a part of, there was a good deal of interaction, both political and social, among people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Our common commitments and struggles brought us together. Racism or ethnic conflict was not a part, or at least not a significant part, of these interactions. In the 1930s, young people of all races were drawn together in the unions and in the Popular Front struggles of the period. It was an interracial and interethnic movement with lofty ideals.

The couple moved into a house in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. When, during World War II, their neighbors supported the Japanese American internment, the Coronas moved to an apartment in the Mid-Wilshire district. They again found trouble when their new landlord complained about their inviting African American union members for visits, accusing them of attempting to integrate the neighborhood. He encouraged the other tenants to petition to have the Coronas evicted, but the Coronas held a party for all of their neighbors, inviting the Black friends and their congressperson, Will Rogers, Jr. While the representative was unable to attend, his wife, Martha Fall Rogers, who had been a classmate of Corona's at El Paso High School, did. She helped convince the neighbors to drop the petition, and the Coronas lived there until Corona enlisted in the army and Blanche moved back in with her parents.

Corona remarried Angelina Casillas in 1994. Corona is survived by his daughter Margo De Lay, Frank Corona, and Ernesto Corona.