Tributes paid to tireless campaigner Rita who died on International Women's Day (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)
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Tributes paid to tireless campaigner Rita who died on International Women's Day
9:00am Tuesday 19th March 2013 in News
By Kathie Griffiths, T&A Reporter
Rita Corina with her son Alex and daughter Sheri Wolfenden
Tributes have been paid to Bradford free thinker and campaigner Rita Corina who has died at the age of 84.
Mrs Corina, who had been living at a care home in Heaton until her health worsened, died at Bradford Royal Infirmary.
Her artist son and former Wibsey councillor Alex Corina, now of Liverpool, said it was appropriate his mother, who fiercely and tirelessly supported rights and equality, died on International Women's Day.
He also said it seemed fitting her death was in the same week director Ken Loach's film about the founding of the NHS opened in cinemas and during a campaign to revive Bradford's Speakers Corner which she whole-heartedly supported.
She had been a familiar and frequent face at the former speaker's corner in Broadway supporting her husband Joe on the platform and had no fear in “facing down” hecklers, said Mr Corina.
As a young girl she grew up alongside three brothers in Whetley Hill and went to work in the mills, meeting and marrying Joe and the pair becoming inveterate campaigners.
She was a member of the Free Thought and Secular Society, was active in the peace movement in the 1950s and 60s and was a founder member of Bradford's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
She nursed her husband through illness and continued the campaigning spirit long after he died.
In the late 1980s Mrs Corina converted her large home off Halifax Road into a care home for nine residents running it for more than two decades .
“Making a difference and improving peoples' lives was what she was about. She was a force to be reckoned with,” said her son Her funeral service is at Parkwood Creamtorium in Elland on Thursday, March 28, at 2.15pm. As well as Alex, she leaves a daughter Sheri Wolfenden and four grandchildren including Joe Corina, who is involved in the Bradford Speaks project to reinstate a speakers corner in the city.
