‘If you go 5 miles east of West Garfield Park ... the life expectancy for residents is 13 years longer.’

Lashone Kelly, interim director of the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative, stands at the end of a strip of a half-dozen boarded-up houses in the 3900 block of West Wilcox street in West Garfield Park. Her organization works to rally other community groups to collaborate to bring investment to the West Side neighborhood, which has struggled to retain population since the 1950s, when the Eisenhower Expressway cut an eight-lane swath of pavement through the south end of the community. (Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times)

Kelly is a lifelong resident of Chicago’s West Side. Born in West Garfield Park, her family moved to Austin when she was a child. When she married, she moved into a house on the east side of the park. Before joining the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative, she worked for the Chicago Department of Housing, chasing bad landlords and trying to rescue derelict buildings.

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