She called her life's activism a "wild joyride." In an open letter published on her website in September, Córdova said that she learned she had colon cancer in 2008 and that it had spread to her lungs and brain. She and Ballen moved to Mexico, where Córdova explored her Latina heritage and began writing her 2011 memoir, "When We Were Outlaws." The couple returned to Los Angeles in 2007. and she truly did have an ability to be visionary."Ĭórdova sold the Community Yellow Pages in 1999. "She was, to me, brilliant and beautifully complicated and tough, while being soft at the same time," Ballen said in an interview this week. The couple were legally wed in 2013, after same-sex marriage became legal in California. "There was power in that book, letting the outer world know that there were more than five of us, that there were doctors and lawyers and accountants."Ĭórdova and her spouse, Ballen, committed to each other in an August 1995 partnering ceremony before family and friends.
"Jeanne created a vehicle for us to come out and be safe," Bottini said.
Ivy Bottini, a longtime friend and fellow activist who advertised her real estate business in the Community Yellow Pages, said the directory helped bring local gays and lesbians out of the shadows, publishing their real names in an era when many were afraid to be publicly identified. "I don't have to run around the house and hide any telltale signs that I'm a lesbian." "I am much more comfortable with a gay plumber than I am with a straight one," Córdova told The Times in 1989. In 1981, Córdova founded the Community Yellow Pages, a directory of gay- and lesbian-owned Southern California businesses, providing options for consumers looking for companies that catered to them without judgment. A collection of her columns was printed in her 1974 book, "Sexism - It's a Nasty Affair." In addition to the Lesbian Tide, Córdova wrote and edited for the Los Angeles Free Press. It became a nationally distributed publication and rallied crowds to political gatherings, including the National Lesbian Conference at UCLA in 1973.
Córdova's Daughters of Bilitis newsletter evolved into the independent Lesbian Tide newsmagazine in 1971.
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