Name/Title
Elena Lim Wong Viscovich Oral History InterviewEntry/Object ID
RLG_109Scope and Content
This interview is part of the Represent Los Gatos Oral History Project series. Elena Lim was born in Marysville, California, and was orphaned when she was only a year old. As a young child she lived with a few different families in San Francisco Chinatown, and then lived in the Ming Quong Home from 1953 to 1958 when the Los Gatos home closed. Hear about her inspiring journey, as she details accounts of her school days, her times at the Ming Quong Home, working in the education field, and making a difference in many students' lives. Read a complete transcript of the interview below. Grace Song: [00:00:00] Ok, well, hello, Elena. Welcome and thank you so much for joining us. We're so excited that you're able to take the time to interview with us and talk about your experiences not just in Ming Quong, but in or beyond Ming Quong, and even before that, too. Would you like to introduce yourself? Elena Wong: [00:00:21] Well, my name is Elena Lim Wong Viscovich, and I was in Ming Quong Home from 1953 until it closed in 1958. Grace Song: [00:00:37] Thank you. Do you want to talk a little bit about where and when you were born? Elena Wong: [00:00:42] Yes, I was born in Marysville, California, and I was orphaned or I was told I was orphaned and I lived with quite a few families in Chinatown in San Francisco. Grace Song: [00:00:59] I see, and how how did you find out about your parents or did you find out any information about them later on in life? Elena Wong: [00:01:09] It was really interesting. The from what I could gather when the people gossiped in Chinese, I got all different stories. So I really don't know. Didn't know much about my background until a cousin of mine saw me on television and then in the newspaper and found out I was with the State Department of Education and called me and he was at the Pentagon. He was the captain. And I thought I was in trouble already because I had just expelled a young woman from the public schools because she misused her her status as being a student and trying to join and recruit in the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. And so I thought I had done something wrong. And he called me to say, I saw your picture. You look just like our family and I'm your cousin. And so from there, I got to know more about that family. But it was really kind of shocking and not uncomfortable. But I wasn't sure how to take all of this until recently. When I found a, I went to a reunion with all these cousins and this huge family. And I saw people that looked like me and we had freckles. And I go, oh, boy, they must be related to me. Elena Wong: [00:02:42] But more than that, I was tracing their backgrounds and found a habeas corpus document and it showed that my grandfather was born here in 1880 in San Francisco. So I've been delving into the family history. And it's is really quite interesting because now history is a reality and I can see the tie ins of how things happen. Grace Song: [00:03:12] Wow, that's very interesting. Were you able to find other family records by researching the genealogy? Elena Wong: [00:03:18] Yes. First of all, when I went to the home, there wasn't much information Ming Quong home. There wasn't much information on me. And so when I finally went to work, the phone company had to do a security vetting of me because it was a security building and they gave me my birth certificate and that was my first information on myself. Elena Wong: [00:03:48] And then about six months ago, I went up to Marysville and found my mother's death certificate. So pieces are beginning to fall into place. Grace Song: [00:04:00] Wow, that's quite amazing. So I guess I wanted to ask a little bit about what your childhood was like in San Francisco, Chinatown, and kind of going between different houses and different families that you were living with at the time? Elena Wong: [00:04:22] Well, it was very difficult because in the Chinese culture, there's a name for every relative in the family. And then when you're you're not a real relative or you're not in in birth order or something, you call people that are your friends and neighbors, auntie and uncles. And I never knew who was real and who wasn't. And so it was difficult for me living in San Francisco. And I was very precocious child when I didn't like it. When I went to about seven schools by the time I was in the second grade and if I didn't like the teacher, I would pretend I didn't speak English. But meanwhile, I'm listening and I memorized all the pre primers and the primers so I could recite any page they wanted and they just didn't know what to do with me. And any time I didn't like something, I'd run away. And you could find me at the De Young Museum, you could find me at I. Magnin's Department Store or sneaking backwards into a movie house to see a matinee. So and I knew every bus driver and streetcar driver in San Francisco. So I really got preferential treatment from them because they kind of watched out for me. And their wives always had an extra sandwich for me. Elena Wong: [00:05:54] So I had something to eat. And then, you know, I just survived that way for many years. Grace Song: [00:06:04] I see. And so I am guessing that school was just a lots of ups and downs probably, and. Elena Wong: [00:06:15] It was yeah, it was really difficult because, you know, like they would say, oh, it's Mother's Day, you need to make a card for your mother. And I'm going, I don't have a mother. And they said, well do the best you can. So I just found that was kind of insecure or that they just didn't know any better, you know? And so sometimes if I really respected the teacher, I go to school and endure class, if I didn't respect them, I take off. Elena Wong: [00:06:45] You know, I would show up for the beginning of the class, perhaps, and then by lunchtime, I'm gone. So I did some things that were hard for them to control, shall we say. Elena Wong: [00:06:58] But I did also learn a lot because one of the things I remember in the fourth grade is she was talking about an American can be president. Elena Wong: [00:07:14] And so, you know me. I said, well, then I can be president of the United States. And she says, no, you have to be an American. And I says, I'm an American. I'm also Chinese, but I'm an American. She says, no, no, no. I mean, you need to be white. Elena Wong: [00:07:32] And I go, oh, well, that's not what it says, and we got into an argument and I walked and I was sent to the principal and I didn't want to see the principal, so I just left for the day. Grace Song: [00:07:48] That's a good call, I think, especially because you are right, you are you are an American, so. Yeah, well, I guess how did whoever was your guardian at the time, how did they hear about Ming Quong and the services and how did you end up there? Elena Wong: [00:08:11] You know, I was in so much trouble, you know, that I would take library books and didn't return them and things like that. And so I had some contact with Cameron House in San Francisco, but I never had the twenty five cents for the offering or for the extra activities. So I went sporadically and I really don't know how I was placed, who placed me in Ming Quong. All I remember is in January 1953, it was a cold, cold, clear day and I was taken by car, by a person they called my father, who I never saw, so I didn't know who he was, but I just sat there and I figured, well, going somewhere is better than staying where I was. So they drove me down to Ming Quong Home and was just before lunch. And you have to picture me. I was truly the ugly duckling. I was 50 pounds. My skin was very yellowish. I had a double row of teeth because they never pulled my baby teeth. So teeth are coming either in the front of it or in the back of it. And when I got there was close to 12, so. Elena Wong: [00:09:44] This person turned me over to Ms. Hayes, the director, and she said, would you like lunch? And I said, Oh yes, lunch you now. And she says, well, you know, all your your classmates or your roommates are going to be in school, so you're going to have to eat with the little kids. So I sat at Ms. Hayes' table. And the menu was grilled cheese sandwich with salad, milk and ice cream. Elena Wong: [00:10:20] Well, I gobbled everything up and she said, Would you like seconds? And I said, Oh, yes, please, but not the salad. So by the time they got through with me, I ate three grilled cheese sandwiches, drank two eight ounce glasses of milk and had five double scoops of ice cream. I thought I was in heaven. And then I was you know, I was looking at the little kids and what am I going to do til some kids my age show up? And so I said, could I please watch the presidential inauguration? And Ms. Hayes looked at me and I think she figured out I was going to be trouble. So she said, of course. And so I spent my time enjoying my day till my my roommates came. Elena Wong: [00:11:10] And that's how I got into Ming Quong Home. Grace Song: [00:11:13] That's a great story and also a great welcoming meal. I mean, a grilled cheese sandwich and ice cream. It sounds like literally like heaven. Elena Wong: [00:11:23] It really was. I mean, just to have regular meals was so exciting. Grace Song: [00:11:31] Yeah. That must have been such a contrast to because it seems like you were pretty underweight when you came. Elena Wong: [00:11:39] Yeah. You know, what struck me about Ming Quong is we were living in cottages and there I think there were about 15 girls about my age. And I was in the older girls group and I had because all the other girls had been assigned a roommate, I was given a room by myself, but it was a real bed with sheets and blankets. And they had kind of a recreation room and it had a huge library. There wasn't a TV there, but they had a what, a record player. And they had books. And I looked and I said, oh, boy, the Nancy Drew series. And I had a book to read every night. You know, it was just so exciting for me. I, I was in seventh heaven. Grace Song: [00:12:35] That's great. And I know that the last time we talked, you talked about sports and kind of learning how to play. Well, I think you learn how to play tennis in San Francisco right? Elena Wong: [00:12:49] Yes. Grace Song: [00:12:50] Probably continued some sports in Los Gatos. Elena Wong: [00:12:53] Well, you know, what was interesting is Los Gatos in terms of the school system was was just so unique because they had such high standards. And so I really had to scramble because when they looked at my transcripts, they promoted me a year ahead of my class that where I was in San Francisco. So I went into the sixth grade. Elena Wong: [00:13:17] And this Mr. Pennerman, I kept on getting a B pluses and I could gee what's wrong with my papers they're beautiful. I mean, it was gorgeous handwriting. And I had pictures and illustrations and margins were straight. And he said, well, you know, I need you to think I need you to ask yourself questions. Why did somebody do this? What was it from his point of view? And then how do you feel about need to write this into your answers? And I'm like, oh, gosh, I better scramble. And one of the things is math. I was always good in computations when I was in school in San Francisco. I was in a low fifth high fifth grade class. Elena Wong: [00:14:13] And so I would sit near the high office so that when I learned all my low fifth grade math assignment, I'd listen to what the fifth grade and I do it too. And I would be very quick and I felt pretty confident in my skills. But when I got to Mr. Pennerman's class, I didn't want a B plus I needed a I needed to be on top of the class and I couldn't get mad at him because there was no way to run away. You know, it was a long ways from downtown. When you're a little kid, you're in the hills of Los Gatos and downtown only had that one theater and we were Chinese. They would have seen me and knowing that I was running away. So that wasn't any good. So I decided I better buckle down and settle down. And although I only stayed in the Los Gatos Elementary School for a while, I was in Los Gatos for eight months, but I finished the sixth grade there. I really wanted to go to seventh grade in Los Gatos because being that I was a little precocious, one of the things that I remember most about getting into trouble with is breakfast. They, by the grade level they assigned how much you had you would get to eat and you would get a dish of fruit and then you would get two pieces of half pieces of toast and you would get mush. Elena Wong: [00:15:44] And that oatmeal mush was so hard, it consolidated and so I could eat the toast and the fruit and drink my hot chocolate or the milk, but that's all I wanted. And if you didn't finish, you get it for lunch. And if you weren't there for lunch, you get it for dinner till you've finished it. Elena Wong: [00:16:05] And I'm going, oh, so I got I was very smart. I found out where the bathroom was and I so I, I would nudge the girl and they would distract the housemother sitting at my table. So I take the bowl mush and throw it into my cotton napkin, wrap it up and then be excused to go to the bathroom and throw it into the toilet. Well, the toilet jammed and I was assigned KP duty again and that was fine with me, except that in the mornings you would be late for school and all the girls left before me because they were going to be on time. So I would tear out of that kitchen. And I was running and I really got a joy out of running. And one time the coach for the seventh and eighth grade kids was standing at the gate and there was word that I was coming. I guess somebody told him, take a look at this kid because she can run and he clocked me. And he says, I'd like you on the running team next year. And so I was really just totally deflated when when the director of Ming Quong said, well, we are moving the seventh grade girls into the Oakland Ming Quong because you need to learn about the Chinese culture and get to know the Chinese community. And I truly did not want to leave. I just thought the world of the school system there and that I could get some athletic training. Elena Wong: [00:17:44] And as I said before, I had learned how to play tennis on the streets and in the playgrounds of Chinatown. And I was rather quite good. So I was hoping to perfect that. Well, it it was a dream that was kind of put by the wayside until the the 10th grade and when I entered high school, and that's when they really found out how good I was because I had to play with the boys. Elena Wong: [00:18:22] And I won. Grace Song: [00:18:23] Not only can you are you eligible to be the president, you're also eligible to play against the boys and win. That's great. So so then you are you attended 6th grade at what was the name of the school? Was it the Los Gatos Grammar School or what it was University Avenue. Elena Wong: [00:18:49] It was. I don't remember the name of it. I just remember we had to run all the back streets and down a hill and it's like crossing a bridge. Grace Song: [00:18:58] Oh, yeah. So that must have been the University Avenue School, which is now Old Town. Elena Wong: [00:19:04] Yes. Yes. Because I was driven there and it looks so different because it looked huge when I was little, you know, but I, you know, over and over again, I was just so lucky to have Mr. Pennerman as my teacher. And I don't know if I mentioned this, but when I was a consultant at the State Department of Education, I was standing in the lobby one day and I saw this man coming with a delegation of people and he was going into the state Board of Education meeting. Elena Wong: [00:19:38] And I said, excuse me, are you Mr. Pennerman? And he had won the Teacher of the Year award. So obviously, he was just such an excellent teacher. Elena Wong: [00:19:49] And I am so grateful to this day that he did what he did for me, because I think in many ways he motivated me to be a real good teacher. Grace Song: [00:20:02] Wow. That's a that's a wonderful story. And it's so great that you got to meet him later on so many years later. Elena Wong: [00:20:10] To tell him, you know, because I don't think teachers really know how they affect the life of someone. And it taught me a lesson later when I was an assistant superintendent in a small school district in L.A. in Monterey Park, and I was reading a book to a class of I think they were about third graders and the principal nudged me. Elena Wong: [00:20:43] He says that kid sitting there is always mouthing off and she's having problems at home and on and on. And I remember telling her, you know, when I was little, I was an orphan and I didn't know who my parents were. And I blamed people for not having enough food to eat or an unsafe place to live. And then one day I woke up and said, you can blame people all the time and you can spend your life blaming people, but what are you going to do about it? So you got to take care of yourself because nobody else will. And I said that as a comment to her. And apparently she told the principal, I'm changing my life around. I am going to be like Dr. Wong. And I go, Oh, somebody listened to me for once. Grace Song: [00:21:40] Wow. That's very rewarding. So let's see then. You left Ming Quong kind of abruptly then to go back to go back up north in Oakland. What was it like? Because that that was a Ming Quong Home too up there in Oakland. And so you attended. How long were you there? Elena Wong: [00:22:05] Well, I. Was there from 1954 to 1958 when the home closed, so I was able to finish 11th grade in Ming Quong Home and. I understand why they tried to move to to give us a broader life, because, you know, when we were in Los Gatos, because we were 12 to 15 girls our age and then another 40 kids that were younger than us, we had our own playmates. And we were also pretty obvious that we were a minority, we were Chinese. And so, you know, we were identified as a group. And to this day, I don't remember being invited to anybody else's house to play where when we moved to Oakland, we were we went to a school that was predominantly Chinese. And I'd have to say seventh and eighth grade there were a total waste of time for me, but I stayed because by that time I learned no more running away. Elena Wong: [00:23:22] And it wasn't until I got into ninth grade that I began being stimulated by by what I could do. And, you know, since I had excelled, I was always placed in the college prep or the advanced placement classes. And so one of the things Ming Quong did for us is it had a lot of visitors and some of these people were our sponsors of Ming Quong. And one of the sponsors, Mr. and Mrs. Hall took a liking to me. He was the vice president of Mats and Liners. And I got a sense of what home life really was. And they had grown children. So they always encouraged me to go to college and they were always talking about their experiences. And one went to Stanford, another went to Cal. And I figured, well, since I don't have any money, I don't think I could go to Stanford. But because our high school although was a technical high school, it had a very strong academic program for college. And I had a wonderful P.E. teacher. She encouraged me and I was probably one of the few young women at that time that got my Block T athletic sweater by the time I was in my junior year. So she saw my potential and she encouraged me not only to competitively play, but there were people that would also coach me that were from a country club or whatever. And so I was really given the best that Ming Quong could give me. And, you know, I've been very fortunate in that sense. But when the home closed, it was devastating because I was given two choices. Elena Wong: [00:25:36] You could go back to a relative or you could take a job as a care caregiver for a nanny, for some family. And I was never quite. Domesticated enough to do chores and cook and things like that, and I saw the director's face, Miss Musgrave, and she was in such pain in trying to place us because she was just devastated the home had to close. So I lied. I told her all I'm going to my relatives. Elena Wong: [00:26:19] And so I moved out and one of the other girls that graduated from Ming Quong had an apartment and she was working. So I moved in with her for almost a year and I worked at the Peralta Hospital as a kitchen aide so I could deliver meals to to the patients. And that's how I got through my last year of senior high school. Grace Song: [00:26:48] Wow. And so she did she live in Oakland? Elena Wong: [00:26:52] Yes, that's why I was able to finish school there. But at the end of my senior year, I had a friend who introduced me to her family. And it turns out that her aunt and uncle adopted me. After I graduated from high school, so my dad is was a six foot three Irish American and my mom was five feet round Italian American, and they they did well by themselves. My dad was in real estate and my mom owned a Italian restaurant with her sister and her mother. And so even though I. I wasn't going to be supported to go to college because they thought women should go to work or get married and I wanted to go to school because I knew I had the Cal scholarship and that paid enough for tuition and a meal ticket and I could ride the bus to go to school every day. And so they supported me in that. Elena Wong: [00:28:17] And then they were so surprised because coming to a tennis match at the Cal stadium there, and they go all these good people going to be watching you play. I go, yeah, but it won't be long till I figured out how I'm going to win this game already. So I hope she's not too good. And I was lazy. I didn't want to run, so I placed all my shots and won fast and got out. Grace Song: [00:28:41] Oh, that's funny. Wow. So what were your parents names? Elena Wong: [00:28:50] My parents are. Ann and Bob Hayden. And that's a nice name, but I really didn't use it because using the last name would be saying I was not Chinese, perhaps white when people were reading my resume and I learned a very important lesson. I was when I went to work and graduated from college, I was at the beginning of the civil rights movement. And I remember I I turned in my my application to a very prestigious department store and I put Elena Hayden on there. When they saw me, they said the job was filled already. Elena Wong: [00:29:49] And it wasn't even an interview, so I knew something was wrong, and when I went back to class, my girlfriend, who was blond, petite, gorgeous, applied for the same job. And so she says, well, I turned the job down after you because I didn't like the way they treated me. So it shows you that, you know, you can't judge people by the color of their skin. There's a there's something wonderful when somebody has that integrity that she could say, I can turn that down because it was the wrong thing. And so, you know, you always take those as lessons because the orphanage taught us that to stand up for those who couldn't do for themselves and to always tell the truth. Now, sometimes you don't ask me. I'm not going to tell you, but I will tell you the truth if you ask me and to try to do it so that you don't hurt people's feelings. Grace Song: [00:31:01] Right. Yeah, that's a great lesson. And I just thought of how Ming Quong just exemplified that. Right, because they were taking in Chinese girls because nobody else would. Right. So these other agencies or, you know, child care type of things or orphanages were really limited in terms of who they would accept so. Elena Wong: [00:31:30] You know, just the time period, I mean, when you look at history, the fact that when Ming Quong was started in 1925 in the Oakland Hills, it was the only institution in the United States that would take Chinese girls or Chinese American girls or Chinese and and mixed marriage girls. And they were coming from the East Coast, from Panama, they were coming from all over. I don't know how they got there, but when you got there was no acceptance of them anywhere else. And then it wasn't until, you know, the 1950s before that turned around, before the courts were getting some of us because we were in the juvenile courts for many reasons, but. It's it's striking that over time, things change and referrals change. Grace Song: [00:32:37] Yeah, definitely, and I know one of the reasons you wanted to do this interview is to sort of correct some misconceptions regarding Ming Quong and that the girls and their backgrounds. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Elena Wong: [00:32:58] I do. Let me preface that by saying that my career has taken over so much of my life. And so I have lived in Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Monterey Park, San Gabriel Valley, and then up to Sacramento and then to Stockton as my last employment. And so I haven't seen these girls since 1958. And but I kept in touch with one or two of them. And so one of them told Uplift Family Services that bought Ming Quong home that there was going to be a celebration of Ming Quong and there was going to be a luncheon and then there would be a reunion at the Los Gatos New Los Gatos Museum, and then we would be able to have a reception over at the Ming Quong home on Loma Alta Avenue. And I said, oh, wow, I haven't seen some of these girls for 40 years. This is going to be fun. So I went. And I I was so happy to see my friends, my sisters, because I want to know what happened to them and by the time we got to the Los Gatos Museum, I was flabbergasted because it said there are orphans of prostitutes Ming Quong, a rescue home for prostitutes, were some of the headings on the things and I kept on looking at myself and I said, that can't be because that's not us. Elena Wong: [00:34:55] And so I decided. Well, what can we do about it? And so two of the girls wrote the San Jose Mercury and tried to correct it and it didn't go very well because they said, well, if you want to correct something, you can write one hundred and fifty word rebuttal and we may print it. Elena Wong: [00:35:19] I said, no, we're not going to do that. So I, I decided to do some research and I am an academic kind of person. You know, I document everything and I learn how to do it through the dissertation. So I found out that it all started because of the work of a very powerful feminist missionary, Donaldina Cameron. Elena Wong: [00:35:47] She went to the Presbyterian Mission home in 1895 and there were rescues going on for victims of human trafficking that were Chinese from 1877. So she came in and she was really moving that and sometimes at the. Unhappiness of the people that that were the sponsors of the Presbyterian Church, which were men that were the deacons, but it was the wives that said, no, Donaldina, you need to keep on doing this. So she was known for this. And that went on for quite a time. However, by 1915, the mission home in San Francisco that took in these victims of human trafficking were also picking up children that were neglected off the streets of San Francisco, boys and girls. So, Donaldina Cameron and the Tooker sisters decided they would establish a Tooker Memorial Home for Chinese boys and girls. And it was accepting children all over the place. Ms. Cameron felt that it was wrong to keep the victims of human trafficking and the young children together because they were learning about the victim's lifestyle, their, their language was left a lot to be desired, and the kids were picking up a lot of swear words, some bad words. And and so she moved them to Oakland in 1915, to Tooker Home. Well. By 1925 that had become overflowing where she was renting some flats nearby to house the extra children, and she was really quite a fund raiser. Elena Wong: [00:37:58] She met Captain Robert Dollar and she told him about the problem of not having enough room and how she was going to work with the Baptist Church to open Chung Mei Home for the boys. But she still needed room for the girls. So Mr. Captain Dollar donated enough money to build Ming Quong Home in 1925 on the Mills College campus. Elena Wong: [00:38:32] And it was there that. The problems of the community were still coming with kids that had tuberculosis, asthma and such, and so Donaldina Cameron said, well, we need to expand Ming Quong to Los Gatos. So they open Ming Quong Los Gatos in 1934, first for tuberculosis and for asthma and the respiratory problems. And then she said and the Chinese community by then had grown. There were marriages, there were children. And so she said we need to move the Ming Quong Home that's on the Mills College campus to near to Chinatown in Oakland. So that was established in 1935. So you can see there was a huge span of time and yet. Elena Wong: [00:39:34] Because of the sensationalism of Donaldina Cameron, people link everything all together and don't draw the distinctions of the locations and the functions of Ming Quong Home versus the missionary home, that was a rescue for prostitutes. And, you know, I'm not going to judge why they did it, but they did. And if you look on Google, you will see that you will see headlines. Rescue home for prostitutes, Presbyterian and prostitutes, orphanage for young sex slaves, orphans of prostitutes. And I thought, oh, my gosh, we've got to get this corrected, because for many of us, we had little to nothing and we were able to make a better lives, life for ourselves and our families and for many of us we have done well in our professions. We have doctors, we have nurses. We have heads of of corporations. Elena Wong: [00:40:44] We've got women who who volunteer, you know, in their communities. They work on the the in the shelters. They give food and serve food for the Salvati... [truncated due to length]Collection
Represent Los Gatos Oral History ProjectOral History Details
Interviewee
Lim Wong Viscovich, ElenaInterview Date
Oct 16, 2020Primary Language
EnglishRecording Media
MP4Oral History Notes
Creator: Los Gatos Library
Publisher: Los Gatos Library
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