Celebrate the Healer Within: Walter P. Lomax, Jr. M.D. Tribute Mural
This mural, Celebrate the Healer Within, honors the life and legacy of Walter P. Lomax, Jr. M.D. (1932–2013), physician, entrepreneur, and philanthropist, whose decades of service transformed healthcare access for Philadelphia communities. Created by artist Athena Scott, the mural replaces an earlier 2000 tribute by David McShane that was ultimately obscured by new housing construction, giving the neighborhood a renewed and reimagined homage to one of its own.
The mural reflects not only Dr. Lomax’s decades of medical service to the neighborhood but also his broader identity as a builder of institutions—in health care, media, community, and family life. Positioned once again near the streets that shaped him, the artwork ensures that his story remains visible and accessible to the community he loved and served for more than thirty years.
At the center of the composition sits a warm, dignified portrait of Dr. Lomax, smart and smiling—the anchor around which the rest of his story unfolds in a layered collage of memory and place. Street signs for 19th and Reed Streets mark the South Philadelphia block where Lomax was born and raised. A corner sign for Walter P. Lomax, Jr., MD Way—the honorary renaming of the 1800 block of Wharton Street—commemorates the site of the medical practice he opened early in his career, just blocks from where he grew up.
A vintage photograph of Lomax with Martin Luther King, Jr. references a powerful chapter of his story: Lomax treated Dr. King for an upper respiratory infection during a 1968 visit to Philadelphia. A radio microphone and the WURD logo honor Lomax’s commitment to the sustainability of WURD, which became the only Black-owned and operated radio station in Pennsylvania. A black-and-white family portrait and a historic house root the mural in Lomax’s personal and family history.
