Photos by Sam Dean | The Roanoke Times

Above, Bill Dudley stands with his Pro Football Hall of Fame replica bust.

"I’m one of the few people around who knew Bronko Nagurski, Red Grange and Jim Thorpe" — Bill Dudley

The Dudley file

(Information from the Pro Football Hall of Fame)

• Named Virginia’s first All-American in 1941
• Pittsburgh Steelers’ No. 1 draft choice in 1942
• Small, slow with unorthodox style, but versatile, awesomely efficient
• Won “NFL triple crown” in 1946 (Rushing, interception, punt return titles)
• Named to All-NFL team in 1942, 1946; 1946 NFL MVP
• Gained 8,217 combined net yards, scored 478 points, had 23 interceptions

A Dudley trading card when he played for the Washington Redskins

LYNCHBURG -- For the last 20 years of his life, former New York Yankees baseball star Joe DiMaggio routinely was introduced as "the greatest living player."

If the subject is University of Virginia athletics, Bill Dudley is the greatest living Wahoo.

Dudley is a member of both the college and pro football halls of fame, he was the 1946 National Football League MVP, and this weekend he will celebrate the 65th anniversary of his selection as the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft.

At 85, Dudley remains remarkably lucid, although details of the 1942 draft remain sketchy.

"I can't tell you anything about it because I didn't know anything about it," said Dudley, who lives in Lynchburg with his wife, Libba, with whom he will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary in July.

"Sure, I knew there was professional football, but you never heard much about it back in Bluefield. I just felt lucky to be able to go to college."

When his Virginia football career ended in 1941, Dudley's plan was to enter the service.

"Those were different times," Dudley said. "The war was going on, there wasn't a lot of hoopla about the draft and football was still in its fledgling years. It really didn't hit popularity until television came in."

The first NFL Draft was held Feb. 8, 1936, and attracted so little coverage that the New York Times waited several days before devoting three paragraphs to it, according to "The Draft," a 2006 book by 1991 UVa grad Pete Williams. The "1942" draft was held Dec. 22, 1941.

"I don't think I even got a call," Dudley said.

The Steelers didn't call Dudley on the day of the draft, but eventually they contacted him, leaving out one important piece of information -- that he was the No. 1 pick.

"All they said was, 'We drafted you,'" he said. "I didn't sign a contract with them till August, I think it was."

The going rate for first-round picks in those days was $10,000, but somehow Pittsburgh got Dudley for $5,000.

He was named NFL rookie of the year in 1942, then enlisted in the Army in December, one year later than planned.

"A bunch of us went up from school [following the 1941 season] and were sworn into the Naval Air Corps, but I wasn't but 20 years old," Dudley said. "I never heard anything from the Navy. The navy didn't take me because I had to be 21, but the Army did."

Because of a technicality, Dudley had not begun school until he turned 7, when he immediately was placed in the third grade. He spent only half a year in the third grade and was still 7 when he began the fourth grade. He could have graduated from Graham High School at 15 but elected to stay another year.

He was an all-county football player at Graham, where he also played basketball and baseball, but not the kind of phenom that would have drawn extensive recruiting interest -- then or now.

Dudley has always been told that UVa learned about him from Jack "Doc" Whitten, who was a friend of his father's and a Virginia state legislator.

"The story I got was that Doc Whitten got up before the finance committee that was wanting more money for the University of Virginia and he said, 'I'm not going to give them a damned dime unless they come out to our part of the state and give some boys some scholarships,'" Dudley said. "I don't know how true it was, but I can imagine him saying it.

"Anyway, I was working on a pop truck in the summer of 1938, delivering Nehi, and the high school coach came by and said, 'Come on. There's a fellow up in Tazewell at Doc Whitten's who wants to see you.' [UVa coach] Frank Murray was there. My high-school coach told him I could kick extra points."

Dudley already had graduated from high school and had no idea where he was going to college.

"Of the five boys that Murray offered scholarships that day, I was the only one who accepted," Dudley said.

"I'd never been to Charlottesville. All I knew about the University of Virginia was that people went up there for essay competitions in the springtime."

As to whether he had any idea that he would be an impact player at Virginia, Dudley said, "I had no more idea than the man in the moon. I played every damn game like I had to make the team, just about."

Along the line, he picked up the nickname "Bullet" Bill.

Where, he doesn't know.

Freshmen were not eligible to play on the varsity when Dudley was in his first year at Virginia in 1938 and he shared time as a sophomore in 1939. He led the Cavaliers in rushing and passing in 1940, then took off as a senior in 1941, when he ran or passed for 29 touchdowns.

The 1941 team was one of the greatest in school history, finishing 8-1, with the lone loss coming at Yale, 21-19.

"That was the only game Yale won," Dudley said.

A review of the Yale archives confirms that.

What Dudley was reluctant to mention was that coach Frank Murray and his staff felt they were asking too much of him and gave him a reprieve from extra-point duties that day.

A replacement missed two out of three extra points and Dudley kicked the rest of the year.

Virginia won its last five games by a combined score of 194-21, allowing no more than one touchdown in any of them, including a season-ending 28-7 triumph over North Carolina on Thanksgiving Day.

"'Nine long years;' that was what was written on a slip of paper we found under our hotel doors that morning," said Dudley, who ended Carolina's lengthy winning streak over Virginia with one of the greatest games in school history.

Dudley carried 17 times for a school-record 215 yards and three touchdowns, passed for a fourth touchdown, kicked all four extra points, punted, returned punts, kicked off and returned kickoffs.

After Dudley's rookie season with the Steelers, Army officials sent him to Randolph (Tex.) Field, where he played on the base football team when he wasn't serving as a flight instructor. Dudley flew one mission as a co-pilot before the war ended and he returned for the final two games of the 1945 season.

In 1946, he led the NFL in rushing, interceptions and punt returns.

He subsequently was traded to Detroit in 1947 before going to Washington in 1950. He played two seasons for the Redskins, then came out of retirement for one season as a place-kicker in 1953. He never earned more than $20,000 in a season.

Dudley, who spent nearly 50 years in the insurance business after coaching briefly at UVa, has enough memorabilia to turn his home into a shrine. Instead, he has his NFL Hall of Fame bust alongside a few pictures in his garage.

His best memories are in his mind and he has a good one.

"I'm one of the few people around who knew Bronko Nagurski, Red Grange and Jim Thorpe," said Dudley, who then related a conversation he had with Thorpe in the White House men's room in the early 1950s.

As recently as Tuesday, Dudley was trading NFL Draft notes with a reporter in advance of a Sirius Radio interview he has agreed to give next week.

"I still don't realize the significance of it," Dudley said. "I'm probably an odd duck."

Didn't they say the same thing about Joe DiMaggio?