Many members of the late Loretta Johnson Williams’ family – including all 12 of her surviving children, now grownups – as well as others she helped raise from the neighborhood and in the substance abuse prevention program she founded – gathered Saturday morning, Jan. 13, 2024, with Statesboro city officials for the unveiling of street signs marking Loretta’s Way.

Williams started working for Pineland Mental Health in 1977 as a substance abuse counselor and became a case manager at the Vista Hall facility, now John’s Place. She was an assistant director in 1990 when among the first to apply for and receive grant funding for a program called The Women’s Place, for pregnant women in need of rehabilitation assistance. Graduates joined the “Bringing Everybody’s Strength Together,” or BEST, mentoring program, which she also founded.

After retiring from state employment, Williams worked for the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office and continued to advocate for people struggling with substance abuse.

She created the youth organization called Statewide Minority Advocacy Group for Alcohol and Drug Prevention, SMAGADP or “Smagadap.” Teenage members from across the state attended conferences in Atlanta and on St. Simons Island. One participant was current Statesboro Mayor Jonathan McCollar.

“She really took a lot of us under her wing and really guided us, and a lot of those kids who were part of that program have gone on to be great contributors to their communities, respectively, and so we want to honor her legacy by continuing the work,” he said recently.

District 2 Councilmember Paulette Chavers read aloud a summary of Williams’ achievements.  Among honors she received in her lifetime was the local Deen Day Smith Service to Mankind Award in 1993. Loretta J.  Williams died June 27, 2022, at age 84. Having had 15 children of her own, she by then had 50 grandchildren.

After a public hearing brought no objections, City Council by a 5-0 vote Nov. 21, 2023, approved renaming the former Brown Street in her honor. Saturday, after sharing memories of Williams and what she meant to them, friends, family members and people she once guided to recovery pulled the veil from the ceremonial sign. City employees then removed covers also revealing “Loretta’s Way,” at its intersections with West Grady Street Extension, Dunlap and Johnson Streets.