Jimmy MacWilliams, Bellevue Park's Most Valuable Team Player

From student to coach to game-changer for countless families in the neighborhood

Jimmy MacWilliams, director of the Bellevue Recreation Center and Programming. Photo by Samanta Helou Hernandez.

Long before I first met Jimmy MacWilliams, the Director at Bellevue Park Recreation Center, I actually met his legacy. It was summertime in the early 2000s–my pre-teen years–which in the neighborhood meant it was time to sign up for some programming amid Bellevue Park’s idyllic greenery in the Silver Lake area; as it turns out, I wouldn’t quite take to the youth programming at the Recreation Center there (since I was something of a restless youth then), but just by being in the care of the center for a summer or two, I became one of thousands of young people from in and around the East Hollywood and Silver Lake areas who would be served and cared for by “Jimmy Mac” and his team.

Jimmy MacWilliams, colloquially known as “Jimmy Mac,” started (or starred) in the sports program at Bellevue Park in the 1970s, particularly after a close run-in with some of the neighborhood’s other youth at the time nearly led him down a different path. He kept up with sports at Bellevue Park from the 2nd grade through his high school years, and after graduating from John Marshall High School in 1979, picked up a part-time job as an assistant there, where by then he’d already spent over a decade of his summers at. The rest of the time, Jimmy earned his living as a house-painter, a trade inspired by his grandpa’s work ethic, who had left school in the 6th grade to work for himself.

Jimmy MacWilliams at John Marshall High School in the 1979 - 1980 School year. Photo courtesy of Jimmy MacWilliams.

When I met with Jimmy for this article, recounting his humble beginnings with L.A.’s Recreation and Parks services, he tells me how in the 1980s the Silver Lake area was made up of far more low-income, working-class families—his own included—which also meant gang involvement for one too many youth like those he was nearly intercepted by in his pre-teens.

Jimmy himself was the only child of a single parent household, born to a *Scottish American* father and Mexican-American mother, Lydia MacWilliams, who was originally from Chihuahua, Mexico. Ms. MacWilliams raised Jimmy alongside her parents, or his grandparents, Santiago and Emma Gonzalez, and it was Santiago Gonzalez who bought the family home on Maltman avenue for all of $15,000 in 1952. Emma Gonzalez, on the other hand, gets credit for teaching Jimmy how to speak Spanish through their household. Today, he continues in their humble abode in the Silver Lake area, where homes now typically sell for no less than $1.4 million.

While Jimmy didn’t grow up with any siblings, he was still in luck. At the time of his adolescence, Tim Crowder, a 6’2”, 250 pound “white-boy disciplinarian mentor,” as he described it to me, was coaching football at Bellevue Park on the weekends, and he looked out for the young Mexican and Scottish American eager to play everything from basketball, to football, to baseball. Jimmy also had the privilege to be coached by none other than East Los Angeles’ (and Belmont High School’s) legendary teacher and organizer Sal Castro, who actually played a pivotal role in landing the Bellevue Recreation Center basketball gym while serving as a commissioner for the city of Los Angeles in 1980.

Freeman Beal, director of Bellevue Park Recreation Center, as well as Sal Castro, alongside L.A. City leaders officializing the park’s Basketball Gym circa 1980. Photo courtesy of Jimmy MacWilliams.

And while it’s true that in the 1980s the Silver Lake and East Hollywood areas became home to a growing number of gangs, given his personal history with the community, Jimmy understood the importance of keeping Bellevue Park neutral ground. So he actually broke bread with a number of gang members he’d come to know and asked them to help ensure the park’s safety for the kids and their families. As tough as it might sound, the request was consistently honored, and Jimmy points out to me that after all, many of those gang members “had participated in the program when they were kids too.” Ever since the overtures, countless young people have gone through the program and broken ever new ground as members of the community, one that was changing then as it is now.

”When I started,” Jimmy tells me, “going to L.A. City College was a big deal” for many of the area’s Latinx families. Today, by contrast, the next generation of Latinx families have kids in Bellevue Park’s programs who go on to “UC Berkeley, Brown University, and more.”

Rene Espinoza Jr., 44, who’s lived in the Virgil Village area for thirty years and who now referees for the basketball program at Bellevue Park, was also one of these youth. Of Jimmy Mac and Bellevue Park’s contributions to his own professional development, he shares that:

“Jimmy introduced coaching youth sports at Bellevue Park back in 2006. He thought it would be a great idea for me to get involved to help out our community, so I did, which has led me to so many opportunities in the coaching world of Recreation and Parks. I'm grateful to Jimmy and the Bellevue staff for steering me on the right path.”

Tony Andres Cante, 41, another local mainstay and mentor in his own right, lights up with the enormous smile known across the neighborhood when I ask him about “Jimmy Mac,” beaming with pride as he tells me how he and his older brother “grew up at Bellevue Park” while Jimmy served as a part-time Assistant there.

The Bellevue Park Minors Football Lions. Number 33 is Tony Andres Cante when he was 9 years old. Photo courtesy of Tony Andres Cante.

Tony would also enroll his own kids in Bellevue Park’s sports programs, including Lily Cante, who started playing tee ball as a short-stop at Bellevue Park when she was 10 years old and is now at Chico State playing competitive softball for the college’s team.

Such success stories permeate across the Silver Lake and East Hollywood areas alike, and well beyond, to the point that this last summer families camped out overnight to sign their kids up at a special discounted rate of $10, largely thanks to some “bonus” funding from the 2028 L.A. Olympics’ Play L.A. Program.

Flyer from May 2024 inviting families to sign up for Bellevue Park’s Summer Basketball Program. Photo courtesy of JIMBO TIMES.

But even more importantly than the subsidized rate, it’s simply the case that many parents and even grandparents who joined Bellevue Park’s sports programs decades ago still want the same services for their children today. Jimmy Mac and his team have earned their trust for the job, including off the field; at a small barbecue recently, his nieces Christine and Katherine Castillo told me of learning how to swim in their uncle’s pool on Maltman avenue during their youth, and not being the only ones.

“Back then,” Christine, who’s in her twenties now, shared excitedly with me, “the entire pool would be full of kids and families from all over the neighborhood!” The get-togethers became unofficial swimming lessons for many, and every now and again, Jimmy leapt from the house’s second story into the pool, making a splash for countless families to see. Each leap also embodied Jimmy’s daring spirit, which many working-class boys of color who literally looked up to him then would never forget.

Leaping into the pool in Silver Lake way before it became one of L.A.’s hottest neighborhoods. Photo courtesy of Jimmy MacWilliams.

There are far more such Cuentos to tell, too many to fit in one article. But Jimmy’s impact at Bellevue Park would blossom in other remarkable ways as more summers passed. In the late 1990s, at 35 years old, he was “the oldest freshman” at local Los Angeles City College, he says with a laugh, but what he clearly wasn’t kidding about was his passion for sports and recreation as career-making activities for families. In 2001, Jimmy graduated from L.A.C.C. with an Associate’s Degree in Child Development, and after two decades, this conferring allowed him to let go of house-painting on the side and go full-time with L.A.’s Parks and Recreation Department.

2004 saw Jimmy take his educational career one step further at Cal State L.A., where he earned his Bachelor’s in Child Development with an emphasis on Youth Agency and Administration. The result was a promotion from Assistant to Coordinator at Bellevue Park. That year, he also gained an Assistant himself, Alfredo “The Big Cheese” Manrique, or the right-hand man who he continues working with today. In 2018, after nearly four decades, Jimmy was named the official director of the Bellevue Park Recreation Center.

Jimmy at his desk at the Bellevue Park Recreation Center. Photo courtesy of Samanta Helou Hernandez.

Jimmy and his team at the Bellevue Park Recreation Center, the majority of whom were participants in Bellevue Park’s programs during their youth, including Jimmy. Photo courtesy of Samanta Helou Hernandez.

Together, he and his team now oversee and manage a year-round rotation of youth and their families in sports and recreation, including 280 kids in the Winter Basketball program earlier this year, and 260 kids in this Summer’s Basketball program, not to mention 50 more kids signed up for camp during all of summertime.

Of the secret recipe that so successfully brings out and keeps families engaged with their services year after year, Jimmy tells me, “The majority of our staff grew up as participants in the Bellevue Park programs, so they have a passion for the job. It’s more than a paycheck for them.”

Once again, I know he’s not kidding. But something also tells me Jimmy’s done an immense job of leading by example, just as his family taught him. His legacy links a myriad of us us in the neighborhood and also keeps us here, affirmed.

J.T.

*An earlier version of this article incorrectly noted Jimmy MacWilliam’s heritage as Irish American. He is in fact Scottish Mexican American.*