'Safe passage': Former Jaguar forms nonprofit to support at-risk African American boys

When single mother Janet Marie Marts was raising her son Lonnie in the low-income Calliope Projects in New Orleans in the 1970s and '80s, she made a promise to herself and to him.

She would do everything in her power to keep him from falling prey to drugs or crime, temptations that could send him down the path to no return. 

With Lonnie's grandmothers helping care for him, Marts worked long hours to put herself through school and become a licensed practical nurse so she could buy them a house in the suburbs.

Marts kept her promise and now her successful son — former Jaguar Lonnie Marts Jr. — is paying it forward.

Marts Jr., now 52, is building a new nonprofit in Jacksonville. Level The Playing Field Leadership Academy will, for free, provide local Black boys the kind of solid footing his mother and subsequent mentors along the way provided for him.

Boys ages 10 to 13, many living with single parents in poor neighborhoods like Marts did, will get mentors, academic and emotional support, cultural enrichment, character development and community engagement through age 21. In four-hour Saturday sessions and field trips and activities during the week, the academy will open the boys' minds to the possibilities.

The first class of 15 boys will begin in June 2021.

The goal for those boys will be the same one Janet Marts had for her son.

"She knew right away that if she didn't get me out of there, there was a way for a lot of bad things to happen," Lonnie Marts said. "It was around you, you were in it. She committed to keep me out of that place and have a normal life."

He was born in 1968 to parents who married and divorced when they were young. When he was 7, his father died. He remembers his growing up years as "pretty tough," he said, but led by a mother and grandmothers who were determined that he not go astray.

He attended St. Augustine High School in New Orleans, a private Catholic prep school founded in 1951 by Josephite priests and brothers. In his time, the school was designated for young men from African American families.

While St. Augustine now "welcomes students of any national or ethnic background, it remains the leading secondary school for Black males in Louisiana and is nationally recognized in educational circles for outstanding success in preparing its students for higher education," according to the school website. Then and now, students wore shirts and ties every day.

A cousin who played football in high school and college introduced him to the sport, which he played linebacker his final year at St. Augustine. After graduation, he headed to Tulane University on a football scholarship. During his senior year there, he showed his skills at a pro day and by calling NFL scouts personally afterward — prompted by his mother — landed at the Kansas City Chiefs.

He later played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, then the Tennessee Oilers and the Jaguars, retiring after 10 years in 2000. He learned strategy from his Kansas City head coach, Marty Schottenheimer, and how to teach from his Tampa Bay coach, Tony Dungy.

"You don't have to degrade people to get them to do what you want," he said of Dungy's coaching methods. "You don't need to cuss and swear and yell. … Great, great man."

After the NFL, he began coaching himself, building a football program from scratch at Harvest Community School, and started an athletic training company with another former player. But he came to realize he knew little about how to be successful outside football.

Marts found help through a pilot program for athletes at Operation New Uniform, which offers free training and development programs, resources and professional networks to improve veterans’ confidence and skills.

His new mission — to support at-risk middle-school Black boys — soon became clear.

In 2013 he and another former NFL player created the Leveling the Playing Field Foundation "under a larger company’s umbrella and that company folded with no apparent explanation," he said. "I believe the timing was wrong as well. But that was our first attempt."

In 2020 his Harvest position was eliminated because of the pandemic's financial impacts on the school. The pandemic also reduced his athletic training company's clients. So he resurrected the Level the Playing Field concept, assembled a board from like-minded community supporters and started building a nonprofit.

Coretta Hill, vice president of the Jacksonville Public Education Fund, is vice chairwoman of the board.

"He has a passion for athletes from single-parent homes living in poverty," she said. "He was one of those. He was one of those to make it out of poverty through athletics." 

Marts recognized that many other young Black boys do not have the academic and emotional support he received from his family. They do not have an uncle to take them on trips — like he did — and expose them to new places and culture. And he knew they needed it early, in middle school.

"Many have single parents, they have some trauma, poverty. You've got all those things coming at you," he said.

Level the Playing Field will be "an exact replica" of Son of a Saint, a New Orleans nonprofit founded by Marts' longtime friend Bivian “Sonny” Lee III.

"His passion and willingness to learn from our successes [at Son of a Saint] connected with me,” Lee said. "Lonnie has been on the top of the hill and he wants to build that same confidence and spirit into young men so they too can get there. I urge everyone  to support his work on the front end, leveling this playing field will be a winning team."

Marts intended to have the nonprofit up and running this year. Because of the continuing pandemic, he and the board decided to use 2020 for fundraising, assembling potential staffers and planning. They will target recruiting in the troubled 32209 ZIP code.

The nonprofit will have tutors, mental health counselors and mentors who will "elevate, expose and enrich" the boys, he said. They will receive academic help, be taken on field trips to places they've never seen, such as the beach, and take part in community engagement. They will learn how to be "stand-up family men, part of the community, to give back … Be empathetic to other people."

And Level the Playing Field will stick with them through age 21. What Marts' mother did for him, Marts wants to do for other at-risk boys.

"We will provide safe passage through the developing years, a prime time in their lives to be distracted," he said.

Beth Reese Cravey: bcravey@jacksonville.com

PLAYING THE FIELD LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

To donate or get more information, call (904) 323-3202, email contact@leveltheplayingfieldla.org or go to leveltheplayingfieldla.org.

PLAYING THE FIELD LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

To donate or get more information, call (904) 323-3202, email contact@leveltheplayingfieldla.org or go to leveltheplayingfieldla.org.