W E D N E S D A Y
February 5, 2025 Vol. 45, No. 31
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JOURNAL of Oak Park and River Forest
@oakpark
Embracing her end gracefully
Page 18
Oak Park approves $1.9M in funding for affordable housing
Orlando embraces holistic health, love and a mindset that looks ahead By GREGG VOSS
New project on Roosevelt Road joins previously announced Madison Street effort
Contributing Reporter
Quality of life, or quantity of years? Gina Orlando will take the former, thank you very much. Whether we realize it or not, we’re all faced with that question in one way or another in our lifetimes. But for Orlando, a Forest Park resident and former long time Wednesday Journal writer and Oak Parker, the question is about as real as it gets. You see, she’s had cancer for 11 years and has been in Stage IV for three years. And it’s not going away. “I’m 100 percent a quality-of-life person. I am zero percent around length of life,” Orlando said in an interview Jan. 29 at her
Special section
By LUZANE DRAUGHON Staff Reporter GREGG VOSS
Gina Orlando and Marty Berg home. “There are people totally opposite. People will do amazingly destructive therapies to possibly live two months longer. “Sometimes that’s necessary, but I’m 100 percent quality of life.” Alongside her husband, Marty Berg, Orlando, 72, covered a lot of ground in a
45-minute interview, as the sun streamed through their condominium windows, illuminating photographs, artwork and as Barbra Streisand once sang, the smiles they left behind.
Oak Park’s village board unanimously approved, with one trustee absent, allocating more than $1.9 million in funding from the housing trust fund to two affordable housing developments, providing 64 new units to the community. The housing trust fund application opened last August with the intention to
See GINA ORLANDO on page 14
See HOUSING FUND on page 6
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