At nearly 100, New Lenox woman still part of bowling league

JoAnne Malmgren is just in awe of a member of her bowling league at Laraway Lanes in New Lenox.

Betty Orlando, who will turn 100 on Dec. 1, said she doesn’t do any actual bowling anymore. She stopped driving and bowling during the COVID-19 pandemic, Orlando said.

“I just go there to irritate everybody,” Orlando said. “I talk to the bowlers and wait until my driver is done. And then I come home.”

Malmgren said she joined the league 12 years ago because of Orlando. Malmgren had just retired and stopped at the alley to visit her husband, who bowled in a league. Malmgren said Orlando told her she was a member and added, “We’ll see you next Monday.”

“Then she said, ‘Do you know how to golf?’ and she signed me up in a golf league,” Malmgren said.

Malmgren has plenty of respect for Orlando.

“She’s such a self-sufficient lady, let me tell you,” Malmgren said. “She lives alone. She’s a widow for the second time. Her husband started the bowling league many years ago. She quilts. She just does so many different things for a lady her age. She’s amazing. She really is.”

Orlando said she joined the senior league because of her second husband, Mike Orlando, who began the league before she met him. Orlando was previously married to Bill Hurley, who died in 1987, she said. She married Mike Orlando in 1991. He died in 2000.

Nevertheless, Orlando learned to bowl long before she met Mike Orlando, an active volunteer at St Jude Catholic Church in New Lenox. She started bowling in 1941 when she was almost 18, after she moved from Colorado to the Joliet area.

“I came to work for my uncle in his grocery store,” Orlando said. “He was a great bowler, and he got us kids into bowling at Rivals Bowling Alley in Joliet.”

Orlando said her uncle Martin Gorsich owned Martin Grocery on Hickory Street.

“It was a neighborhood store, and we did everything that had to be done,” Orlando said. “I even learned to cut meat.”

Orlando said her uncle also taught her to play golf.

“He took us out to Crystal Lawns,” Orlando said. “There used to be a golf course out there.”

What it’s like to be turning 100

Orlando doesn’t golf anymore either. But she still gardens, although she started “cutting back” after Mike Orlando died, she said.

“I used to have a beautiful garden – grape vines, raspberries, gooseberries,” Orlando said. “But it was a lot of work for one person, and it took a lot of time.”

Orlando said she made many quilts over the years for family and friends. However, she stopped quilting five years ago because her eyesight “is not too good,” she said.

Yet Orlando still sews.

Orlando said her mother taught her how to sew on a treadle sewing machine. She likes making her own clothes “because I can put pockets on everything,” she said.

“My current project is making hot pads to put under your pots and pans and dishes when you put them on the table,” Orlando said.

Orlando said her fading eyesight is the reason she quit driving three years ago.

“I went out to do my errands one day – I had a pretty good list,” she said. “The last one was the grocery store. As I was coming home, it was getting dark and cloudy and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can’t really see very good.’ So I thought, ‘If I can just get across Route 30, I can go up the back way and get home.’ When I got home, it took me three tries to get my car into the garage. And I said to myself, ‘Betty, you’re not going to drive anymore.’”

Instead, Orlando relies on New Lenox Township’s transportation service and the generosity of friends.

She doesn’t read much because she struggles with the fine print in newspapers and magazines, even with a flashlight and magnifying glass, she said. And Orlando was never a TV-watcher.

So how does she pass the time?

“I putter,” Orlando said. “I’ve always puttered.”

Orlando said she is “very fortunate” to live as long as she has. She recalled telling her doctor 20 years ago that she wasn’t feeling well, and he blamed it on her age. When she didn’t improve and went back, the doctor blamed her age again.

So she changed doctors.

“The [new] doctor put me on table, listened to my heart and said, ‘Who’s your cardiologist?’” Orlando said. “I said, ‘I don’t have one.’ And he said, ‘You do now.’ Two and half weeks later, I was on the operating table. Evidently, when I was a kid, I had rheumatic fever. And that affected my heart. So they put a new value in there. So far, it’s still working.”

“Evidently, when I was a kid, I had rheumatic fever. And that affected my heart. So they put a new value in there. So far, it’s still working.”

—  Betty Orlando of New Lenox, who will turn 100 on Dec. 1

Orlando said she never drank or smoked.

“I do like to eat, though, just about everything,” she said. “I used to walk two miles a day. But I don’t do that anymore.”

Orlando said she worked at the former Economy Foods in Lockport until she married Bill Hurley in 1973.

“I married late in life. I was almost 59,” Orlando said. “I just didn’t find the right person. He [the right person] had to play golf and like to garden. Bill liked to garden. Mike – not so much. He’d help me once in a while, but he wasn’t interested in it. He did like the food. But he did the work.”

Still, Orlando will tell you she “never really retired.”

“I quit a paying job and then worked just as hard or more after I quit,” she said.