Gim Wong was born in Beloit, Wisconsin, on March 25, 1924, the son of Charles Theong Wong and Yee Shee Gok Wong. He attended Royce Elementary, Lincoln Junior High and Beloit High School, graduating in 1942. He was the unique product of the Beloit community, the first son of the first Chinese family to make this city his home. His father’s sudden tragic death made him a surrogate father to three brothers and three sisters, the youngest a toddler and the oldest twelve when he was fourteen.

As father and brother, with a mother who knew little English, he nurtured and protected sisters who were daughters; he rescued wayward brothers who were sons, taught them self-discipline that shaped ambition and achievement, all while providing for a family that he did not father but chose to raise.  He worked at Yates American Machine Company to support the family until he served his country as a Staff Sergeant with the U.S. Army in the Philippines from November 20, 1944 to November 27, 1946.

He attended Beloit College for one year and continued his education at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, graduating with a B.S. in mechanical engineering in 1951. Bowling was and is an important feature of Wisconsin’s culture. Gim was an excellent bowler and bowled with a UAW-CIO, Local 77 team which entered the state bowling tournament in Green Bay, Wisconsin early in 1947. The five-member team received a letter, in answer to its application that stated Gim was not eligible to bowl in the State tournament be-cause the constitution of the ABC (American Bowling Congress) states that its sanction is extended to “white males only”. The UAW-CIO called a meeting in Chicago on April 1, 1947 to discuss the exclusionary ABC rules.

The National Committee for Fair Play in Bowling (CFPB) was founded at this meeting, with Hubert Humphrey, then Mayor of Minneapolis, as its chairman. Local committees were founded in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Los Angeles. Many WW II veterans took up the anti-discrimination cause at home perhaps because they had just fought a war for democracy against a racist German regime. Gim had served with the 8^th Army in the Philippines during WW II. He returned to a job at the Yates American Machine Company in Beloit where he joined teams in both the company and UAW Local 77 bowling leagues. The board of the ABC unanimously rejected a resolution introduced in 1948 to eliminate its exclusionary clause. Opponents filed law suits in various states (Illinois, where ABC was chartered, New York State and Wiscon-sin, where the ABC was headquartered) charging the ABC with violating civil rights laws. In April, 1950, Judge John A. Sbarbaro of the Illinois Superior Court ruled against the ABC and fined the organization $2,500 and made clear that, had he not had assurance that the ABC would change it membership rules in May, he would have revoked its charter. Thus, Gim as an American born Chinese man, who served two years in the U.S. Army, was awarded several medals and was honorably discharged, unwittingly, played an important part in the desegregation of bowling.

Gim married Marion Erdman on June 26, 1954 in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. They settled in Beloit and had four children; Ann, Wendy, Michael and John. Gim believed in working hard to serve and improve the community in which he lived. He was elected to the Beloit Board of Education in 1970 and served nine years, four as vice-president and two years as president. He served eight years on the city plan-ning commission, three years as the chairman. In 1971 he was named Beloit Booster of the year. He was also active in his church, St. Paul Lutheran Church, where he served on the church council as president, treasurer and financial secretary.

Professionally, Gim was a member of the American Foundrymen’s Society and at the time of his death was serving as treasurer of the Board of Directors of First American Credit Union. He also served on the Beloit Corporation Political Action Committee as Chairman. Gim was a member of the Beloit Memorial High School Alumni Scholarship Fund Committee for the Greater Beloit Community Trust. He also was on the Class of 1942 reunion planning committee. The annual Gim Wong Asian Scholarship (later renamed the Wong Family Scholarship) was established in his memory in 1991 to assist and encourage Asian students to continue their education beyond the high school level.

The virtues Gim lived by: honesty, hard work, loyalty, courage and determination, led him to serve others through neighborhood, church, city and family. He led a good and courageous life, as surrogate father, brother, father, colleague and friend by sacrificing his interests for those of others. Gim died of cancer on November 11, 1991, here in Beloit, at the age of 67. At the times of his death, he was employed by Beloit Corporation as a foundry engineer.

A portrait of Gim, painted by local artist Carole Hill, was com-missioned by his family and presented to the Beloit Historical Society.