Celebrated Chinese American mom to be honored posthumously in Portland

From the Portland Press Herald - Story by Edward D Murray

To say Toy Len Goon was a mold-breaker is a bit of an understatement.

She was the bride of a Portland man, Dogan Goon, who brought her to Maine from her native China in 1921. They had eight children and ran a laundry in Portland.

When Dogan Goon died in 1941, Toy Goon was visited by government officials who wanted her to take welfare benefits, but she refused, according to her daughter, Doris Wong. Goon didn’t want to give up her independence, Wong said, and planned to continue to raise her children on her own until they were ready to head to college.

“There was no way that she would ever lose control of her brood,” Wong said of her late mother, who died in 1993. “Mother was really an extraordinary woman.”

Goon’s extraordinariness will be recognized Sunday, when the Chinese and American Friendship Association of Maine unveils a marker at 615 Forest Ave., where she raised her family and ran her laundry.

The plaque won’t be the first honor bestowed upon her. In 1952, Goon was named Maine Mother of the Year, then National Mother of the Year, by American Mothers, an organization founded in the early 1930s by, among others, Sara Delano Roosevelt, mother of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. READ FULL STORY HERE.