Community Corner
Bake Sale Saturday to Benefit Elizabeth Toy's Son
A bake sale will be held to benefit the Cutchogue mom's little boy.
Even after her tragic death recently, the North Fork community is still coming together to help Cutchogue mom Elizabeth Toy.
Mattituck Leo's Club, the high school branch of the Lion's Club, will host a bake sale on Love Lane at 10 a.m. on Saturday.
All proceeds of the bake sale will be contributed to the Suffolk County National Bank fund to support Elizabeth Toy's son, Matthew, 11.
Toy lost her brave battle with cancer in late September.
Toy, 29, had told Patch that she would do anything to fight and stay alive for her son, who now lives with her mother.
Donations are still being accepted in Elizabeth Toy's Suffolk County National Bank account, friends said, to help give Matthew a secure future.
A pig roast/motorcycle run fundraiser was also held in early October at Four Doors Down in Mattituck, to raise funds for Matthew.
"She was the most amazing person I've ever met," one friend said. "If you were having the worst day of your life, she'd come over and be silly and put a smile on your face."
For months, Elizabeth Toy, consumed with worry over finances and how she will be able to support her young son, turned to the internet for help.
In early September, caring friends posted on North Fork Patch's boards about the challenges Toy, 29, faced.
On her Go Fund Me page, where Toy posted an online plea for donations to help as she faced a life-threatening illness, Toy kept friends and loved ones updated.
Find out what's happening in North Forkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
In early September, Toy said she continued to recover at the Stony Brook University Cancer Center, where she had a bone marrow stem cell transplant to help treat Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Toy reported that the donor cells were beginning to graft, but with "painful complications," and a forecast of at least two to three weeks before she could return home to her son.
Find out what's happening in North Forkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
She returned home, only to undergo complications.
Of her ordeal, Toy wrote, "It's really the hardest thing I've done. There are nights where I haven't been sure I'd even see the next day, but I pray and think of home. Please help us to keep that home."
She added, "It's going to be a long recovery, with many setbacks along the way. I want to thank you all again, and remind you to not take people for granted. Appreciate them while they are here. Set aside differences, strive to lift people up, not hold them down. But most of all, love and be loved."
In April, Toy shared her story with Patch. Only 29 years old, Cutchogue resident and single mom Toy described facing the most terrifying specter a parent can imagine: The fear that she might not live to see her son grow up.
Good news came when a donor match for her bone marrow stem cell transplant was found.
But despite the positive, Toy was burdened with worry and buried beneath financial woes. Fighting illness, Toy had to continue to work to pay her rent and provide for her son.
Her son, she said, was her biggest support and champion. "I told him, 'We don't know what the outcome is going to be, but I'm going to give it my best shot. No matter what I have to go through, I'm doing it for you."
Over the past months, Toy endured six different courses of chemotherapy, radiation, a bone procedure where cancer was removed and replaced with cement, and an auto stem cell transplant, which failed.
Even if the transplant didn't work, she prayed for the hope of another trial drug.
"Maybe it will buy me a little more time," she said. "Precious time, that I can have with my son, to teach him all I want to teach him in an entire lifetime. I have to pack it all in."
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