Photo courtesy of Bill Dudley

Bill Dudley (right, with a Virginia football coach) was the No. 1 overall pick in the 1942 NFL Draft.

The Roanoke Times | File 2007

Bill Dudley, with his Pro Football Hall of Fame replica bust, was enshrined in 1966.

Bill Dudley never knew how he got the nickname, "Bullet Bill."

All he did was make it fit.

Dudley, who went to the University of Virginia as a 16-year-old recruited off the back of a Nehi soda truck, became a college and professional football hall-of-famer. He died Thursday at 88.

A funeral service Monday at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Lynchburg will be preceded by a visitation Sunday from 3-5 p.m.

"Pre-Super Bowl, obviously," said son Jim in a fond and sometimes humorous remembrance of his father. "I guarantee, if it had been one of his friends, he'd have told us to go and tell him how it was, [that] he had a ballgame to watch."

Dudley suffered a stroke Sunday and passed away five days later in Lynchburg, where he had worked in the insurance business since 1961.

Dudley also served two terms in the Virginia House of Delegates and was a staunch UVa football supporter, even raising the flag at a Cavaliers' home game this past season.

In December, he attended a Richmond banquet at which Virginia Tech's Cody Grimm received the Dudley Award, given annually to the state's top college football player.

Dudley was a graduate of Graham High School in Bluefield, where he was a three-sport standout but not a phenom by today's standards. According to one tale, it took the efforts of a family friend and legislator, Jack "Doc" Whitten, to get Virginia's attention.

"The story I got was that Doc Whitten got up before the [state] finance committee and said, 'I'm not going to give them a damned dime until they come out to our part of the state and give some boys some scholarships," said Dudley in a 2007 interview for The Roanoke Times.

"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."

Freshmen were ineligible to play varsity football when Dudley arrived at UVa in 1939 and it was his junior year before he became a starter. Few people, least of all Dudley, were predicting the kind of season that resulted in 29 touchdowns -- rushing and passing -- in 1941.

"I had no more idea than the man in the moon," he said. "I played every damn game like I had to make the team, just about."

The Cavaliers lost at Yale in the third week of the season, 21-19, and then won their last six games to finish 8-1.

In his final game, Dudley carried 17 times for 215 yards and three touchdowns and also passed for a touchdown in a 28-7 victory at North Carolina.

After the season, the Pittsburgh Steelers made Dudley the No. 1 pick in the National Football League Draft, a distinction held by no other UVa player.

Of course, that was in the pre-ESPN era and it would be sometime later before the Steelers made him aware of his selection.

He played one year for the Steelers before joining the service, mostly serving as a flight instructor, although he was the co-pilot for one World War II mission. He played in the last two games of the 1945 NFL season; then, in 1946, he led the league in rushing, interceptions and punt returns.

"I'm one of the few people around who knew Bronko Nagurski, Red Grange and Jim Thorpe," said Dudley, who chuckled at the memory of running into Thorpe in the White House men's room.

Dudley was an assistant football coach at Virginia for a brief period following his retirement from football in 1953 and said there were two or three instances when he was approached about serving as the Cavaliers' head coach.

The money wasn't good in those days; in fact, Dudley said he never made more than $20,000 per year as a player.

He hadn't played golf since last spring, but he attended three or four UVa games this past fall and was "as vocal as ever," said son Jim, one of three children who survive their dad.

Dudley's wife of 62 years, Libba, was holding his hand when he died.

"Daddy's energy had been lagging, but he could still put his game face on," said Jim Dudley, who could tell the end was near when his dad pulled a feeding tube from his mouth.

"He had played the game and played it well and played it hard and played it long. If he couldn't suit up and get back in the game, it was time to go to the final locker room."