The Boys & Girls Club of East County La Mesa Clubhouse honored local basketball star Bill Walton by naming the gym after Walton in 2018. Walton died of colon cancer at age 71 in 2024.
Story and photos by Karen Pearlman
April 14, 2026 (La Mesa) — Bill Walton, who preferred being known as “Billy from La Mesa,” will be memorialized with an honorary street in his hometown. The La Mesa City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved naming a stretch of Lowell Street at Normal Avenue near Bill Walton’s alma mater Helix High “Bill Walton Way.”
The City Council did not share an ETA of when the street would be designated as an honor to Walton, who died from cancer in 2024, but City Councilmember Patricia Dillard, who placed the item on the city council’s April 14 agenda, said “a formal ceremony will be held at a later date with details to be announced soon.”
The plan to honor Walton stretches back to a press conference last November headed by public advocate Shane Harris with Lori Walton, the widow of Bill Walton, in attendance. Harris spoke here about honoring Bill Walton in both La Mesa and the city of San Diego.
A La Mesa native and basketball standout for the Highlanders in the 1960s, Walton rose to fame as a college star for the UCLA Bruins, where he won two NCAA championships. He was a 1993 inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame hoopster after a 14-year career with the National Basketball Association’s Portland Trailblazers, Boston Celtics and San Diego Clippers, and later was a celebrated NBA broadcaster.
Walton was a civic treasure and until his final days remained deeply committed to giving back to the communities that shaped him, attending local events and being part of fundraisers for East County Magazine, Challenged Athletes Foundation and other nonprofits.
He was a vocal advocate for environmental sustainability and youth programs, and championed the renovation of the Mission Beach basketball and volleyball courts. Walton was an executive chairman at San Diego Sport Innovators and locals frequently reported seeing him cycling around local streets and bikeways.
After the meeting, Walton’s widow, Lori Walton thanked the City Council for naming a street after her late husband, “with our deepest gratitude” on behalf of the Walton family, which also includes four sons with his first wife, Susie Guth. Lori Walton was married to Bill Walton for 33 years.
“Bill was incredibly proud of his roots and always credited Rocky Graciano, his first coach at Blessed Sacrament, for introducing him to the game of basketball,” Lori Walton said. “Thanks to Coach Gordon Nash and Helix High School, Bill’s talent began to gain national attention, leading to a scholarship at UCLA.
“Regardless of where we traveled, Bill loved San Diego best and some of his most cherished memories were from his childhood in La Mesa. Bill would be profoundly humbled and grateful for this honor, and we, as a family, share his sentiments.”
The City Council was in agreement that a street for Bill Walton was a winning idea, but Mayor Mark Arapostathis made it clear that this wasn’t the first time the favorite son from La Mesa had been honored in the city.
“Over 20 years ago we recognized Bill Walton on the Walk of Fame (in the downtown Village),” Arapostathis said. “We have a plaque for Bill Walton that says everything we could about him — in a small area… but he’s recognized and memorialized on on the city street.”
Arapostathis also reminded people that the Boys & Girls Club of East County in La Mesa at the Brady Family Clubhouse — just a block away from Helix — named its gymnasium after Walton, who helped cut the ribbon at the club’s grand opening in 2018.
A little controversy
City Councilmember Laura Lothian, who was instrumental in sharing the idea last year with Dillard as part of their work with the city’s Arts and Culture Comission, was critical about the handling of the proposal.
In photo, below right, La Mesa City Councilwoman Laura Lothian (center), speaks about the genesis of the “Bill Walton Way” sign coming to the intersection of Lowell Street and Normal Avenue near Helix High School. City councilmember Patricia Dillard (right) had asked for the street sign designation to be placed on the Tuesday, April 14 city council agenda.Lothian said it was important for the city council to acknowledge that the initial idea for a street designation named after Walton was originally proposed by Harris.
Harris, CEO of a local communications company in San Diego, had been working on honoring Bill Walton with Lori Walton in both La Mesa and San Diego since late 2024, holding a press conference about his plans on what would have been Bill Walton’s 73rd birthday last year.
Lothian said she was unhappy that Dillard was excluding Harris from the process after he had presented a dual-city memorial plan involving San Diego and La Mesa.
“I feel like we are taking something away,” she said. “I feel like theft. I feel like this is unethical… (if) we’re going to actually exclude the person who brought it to us, I don’t feel good about that.”
Lothian said that Harris had envisioned a high-profile unveiling ceremony featuring NBA greats like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
After the meeting, Harris provided a statement thanking the La Mesa City Council and noted that “when this proposal was first introduced in October 2025, there were no active efforts underway in either the City of San Diego or the City of La Mesa to formally honor Bill Walton in this way.”
He said the initiative helped spark that conversation and bring forward a community-driven effort to ensure his legacy is properly recognized, and that his office “got to work to draft the memos, identify locations as options, and issued them to the respective cities.”
Dillard dismissed the notion that any single person or advocate holds dibs on a city-led initiative.
“Shane Harris is free to do whatever he wants to do, but once the city takes up an initiative, it goes into the hands of the city,” Dillard said.
She said she did the legwork to bring the item to the dais and noted that her recent communications with Lori Walton indicated a desire to stay out of “political action.”