As family bench is restored, so are memories of La Jolla

Last Updated on May 1, 2025

All 100 benches in The Village will be rejuvenated.

A happy side effect for some community members as nonprofit Enhance La Jolla and its Maintenance Assessment District work to refinish benches throughout The Village: the stories exchanged amid the renewal.

There are 100 benches in The Village, many of them with memorial plaques affixed and sponsored by La Jolla families over the years.

One such bench at 7880 Girard Ave. was sponsored by Helmut and Hilde Horchler in honor of Helmut’s late parents Wilhelm and Elisabeth Horchler and sister Irmgard.

“They found happiness in La Jolla,” the plaque reads under the names.

Helmut and Hilde live in La Jolla part time on Westbourne Street; for much of the year, however, they are residents of Fort Worth, Texas.

While walking down Girard this summer, the Horchlers saw MAD manager Brian Earley and volunteer Chris Cott restoring their family bench.

“I couldn’t believe it because it was really not very good looking anymore,” Helmut said.

The current bench renewal program, for which Enhance La Jolla contracted local business Japhet’s Painting Company, aims to strip and refinish the 70 wooden benches.

The 30 metal “seahorse” benches in The Village will also receive rejuvenation, Earley said.

From left, Hilde and Helmut Horchler, their daughter Evi Forester and MAD manager Brian Earley

Helmut stopped and introduced himself, he said, adding “this is my family bench. … Brian was all excited.”

“The whole reason why we started [the renewal project] is because of the plaques and the families who invested in the bench in the first place,” Earley said.

The Horchlers’ sponsored bench was installed nearly 20 years ago, at 3:45 p.m. on Dec. 12, 2004, as noted on a card given to the Horchlers by Esther Viti, then the bench chairman of La Jolla Parks & Beaches.

Viti also gave the couple a photo album at the time of the installation.

Helmut moved with his parents and four sisters to La Jolla in 1954 and graduated from La Jolla High School, Class of 1958.

In 2004, Hilde sought to commemorate Helmut’s 65th birthday “with a bench at the beach,” she said. “But at the time, no living people could have a bench and secondly, there was no bench available at the beach. … so we decided on [a bench for] his family.”

Seeing the bench restored decades later brought back many memories for Helmut, he said, noting three of his sisters have died.

Helmut’s first job was at Burns Drugs, now the site of the former Brooks Brothers store.

“I was a junior in high school, and I was hired to deliver prescriptions”, Helmut said, adding he also had a job in the summers at the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club working the snack bar in front of The Marine Room restaurant.

Helmut spent much of his second La Jolla summer with friends on the beach who were LJHS students, including fellow Class of 1958 alumna Raquel Welch, “who was there every day,” he said.

Welch died in 2023 after a long career in film and is one of LJHS’s most famous alumni.

“We used to give her a hard time because back then she used to walk on the beach practicing that model walk,” Helmut laughed.

Earley is hoping the more benches Enhance La Jolla restores, the more families will reach out with stories like these from La Jolla’s past.

“It’s very special,” he said.