New Orleans Saints cornerback Lonnie Johnson Jr. has reminders tattooed on his body that signify the violence and despair he escaped in Gary.

He’s not quitting on his home town, though.

On Saturday, Johnson returned to a freshly renovated stadium at the West Side Leadership Academy to host his third “Protect the Youth” football camp, sponsored by his foundation.

About 350 kids, ages 8 to 18, raced around tires and tossed perfect spirals under a sunny blue sky on West Side’s new bright green artificial turf football field.

Johnson and 2014 Merrillville graduate Ryan Neal, who plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and 2014 Thea Bowman Academy graduate Antonio Pipkin, a free agent quarterback in the Canadian Football League, led the drills with West Side coach Alger Boswell.

“It looks a lot different,” Johnson said gazing at the football field that received a $936,000 upgrade last year. “I just want to give back to the community.”

As Johnson spoke, he smiled as he looked at the flashy new scoreboard displaying him patrolling a backfield on its screen.

Joining Johnson, 27, at his camp were wife Selena and their two daughters, Ayla, 3, and Alani, 2, and 2-month-old son, Aceyn.

“He’s very humble and he’s grateful for everything he earned,” said Selena Johnson of her husband. The couple met at the University of Kentucky, where Johnson graduated after elevating his grades at a junior college.

His mother, Nora Johnson, said playing football was always her son’s vision. “He started at age 5 with football and track. Lonnie came by it naturally.”

She played basketball and ran track at West Side.

Her son played football, basketball and ran track. He won the state long jump title in 2014.

“I moved to Texas now, but Gary is still home,” she said.

The family grew up poor, but managed to sidestep the gnawing gun violence that still dogs the city.

On an August night in 2015, when Johnson was leaving for a Kansas junior college, his friend Daja Brookshire, 15, was shot and killed as she got out of a car at 7th Avenue and Adams Street. She was one of 50 Gary homicides that year.

Johnson has a rose tattoo on his right arm with “Daja” across it along with her birth date and the Aug. 2, 2015 day she died.

Violence was an ever-present undercurrent for Johnson. Before he was drafted by the Houston Texans as the 54th selection in the 2019 NFL draft, Johnson told an NFL reporter he came back to Gary for three funerals before he finished his first year at the University of Kentucky.

“I’ve gotten numb to them. I don’t cry. It hurts but it just becomes another person you knew,” he said.

Still, Johnson loves his city. In 2019, he welcomed local supporters at his NFL draft party at West Side while he awaited a phone call that eventually came from Houston.

Later that year, when Calumet High freshman football player Curtis Walton Jr. drowned in the school pool after practice, Johnson quietly paid for his funeral.

“It’s important for Lonnie that he gives back,” said Boswell.

Rodney Roberts, 12, a 7th-grader at Merrillville’s Pierce Middle School, said the camp “beats sitting on my butt.” Now, he said he might go out for the Pierce team.

Pipkin said he wished there was a camp like Johnson’s when he grew up in Gary.

“We had nobody before. Who knows how many guys we could give a chance.”

Tanisha Reid, of Gary, brought her son Jabari Campbell, 10, to pick up pointers for his season with the Gary Steelers Pop Warner team.

“He’s looking forward to practicing with Lonnie,” she said. “He loves football.”

She said her son’s team plays its home games on the West Side field.

Andrea DuBose, of Gary, said her son, LaShon, 10, went to Johnson’s camp last year. “He wanted to come back. He learned skills and definitely improved,” she said. “He wants to go to the NFL.”

Ryan Neal, a cornerback for Tampa Bay, said the camp is important to kids.

“We feel the 219 area is not looked upon. To these kids, when they see us, it becomes real. We will continue to do this and find ways to give back however we can.”

Carole Carlson is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.