CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ Carolina Panthers defensive end Charles Johnson never celebrated Father's Day while growing up in Hawkinsville, Ga.
The town of less than 6,000 people was large enough to contain Johnson's mother, Jacqueline Kearney, and his grandmother, aunts, coaches and friends, all of whom had a hand in raising him.
It was small enough for people to point out to Johnson his father, a man named "Johnny" who worked in a small auto shop a short distance from his home.
Hawkinsville was also small enough for Johnson to see the man often around town, visiting some of his 13 other children _ two of whom lived across the street. But Johnny never came to see Johnson.
"My sisters, they stayed across the street from me. He would come see them all the time, like his truck would be out front. And I would be at my grandma's house (across the street) and just think that was odd. He never came to see me," Johnson says.
"We would be walking to the basketball court at the park and we would see him ride by. Sometimes he might stop and say, 'What's up?' And sometimes he would just keep riding. He didn't really acknowledge the fact that I was his son."
Johnson says he doesn't hold any bitterness about it.
"I don't knock anybody," he says. "It is what it is. It makes you appreciate your mother, your aunties and your uncles more."
Johnson became a father himself at 25, just as he was settling into what today is an 11-year NFL career.
In the past five years, he has grown to appreciate the depth of what fatherhood means.
And he's making sure his own son's life _ and their relationship _ is different.
