Houston Texans cornerback Lonnie Johnson doesn’t play around.
Maybe it’s the fact he grew up in Gary, Ind., roughly 20 miles away from Chicago; a city of over 80,294 that has been hollowed out like so many other Rust Belt communities.
Maybe it’s Johnson’s childhood and formative years. At age 15, one of his track and field teammates at West Side Leadership Academy was gunned down, and she was someone Johnson considered a really close friend.
Johnson doesn’t gripe about his upbringing in Gary. In some ways, he is thankful because it was the negative he transmuted into a positive.
“It helped me become a better man, helped me become more focused,” Johnson said. “I grew up real early, I’m only 23, I’m about to be 24 this year in a couple of months. So, I just feel like I have the mindset of an older head. I’m not that playful, I don’t really play around.”
Like so many Millennials, even though he doesn’t play around, he stays active on social media, and that is where he discovered the tragic death of Curtis Walton, a 14-year-old freshman at Calumet New Tech High School who drowned in a swimming pool after football practice.
According to reports, Walton was cooling off in the pool after practice and never resurfaced.
“It was difficult the whole time I was there, so I know what his family feels like,” Johnson said. “I lost a lot of people close to me, so I know what it’s like to be in that position. I’ve been in that position plenty of times, so I just wanted to help out anyway I could.”
After further research, Johnson got in touch with Walton’s family, and immediately, after talking with Curtis’ mother, felt her strength and resolve to handle such a devastating life event.
“She’s dealing with it, that’s her son, so I know how a parent is when they lose a child, I just know how it is seeing them break down,” Johnson said. “She’s very strong and she’s just very thankful.”
The kindhearted deed from Johnson is part of a pledge he made during his pre-draft workouts that he wouldn’t go back to Gary unless he could be a force for good.
Said Johnson: “I told somebody in an interview before I got drafted, I won’t be back to my city unless I can bring something back to it. So that’s my goal, to bring life back to the city and give back to my city, that’s part of me doing what I did.”
The impact of what Johnson has done for the Walton family has not yet registered on the second-round rookie, who is scheduled to make $948,028 in his first season.
“It wasn’t really about money to me, I just wanted to help that family so at the end of the day, I felt like I did God’s work,” Johnson said.
