One of my favorite all-time jobs was guarding an empty building for the Department of Energy’s Morgantown Energy Technology Center. The DOE had a nine-story research facility on Chestnut Ridge Road that had been built for some kind of testing. It was directly behind the West Virginia University Medical Center. My job was to walk to a key station at the back of the parking lot and punch a key into the clock I carried, and ride the elevator to the top floor of the building shell and visit another key station. I had to do that once every other hour.

When I wasn’t making my rounds, I spent the rest of my shift sitting in a guard shanty and listening to the radio. I actually won an album by answering a question on WAJR-FM radio. The question was: “What is the maximum amount of money in U.S. coins that a person can have and still not be able to make exact change for a dollar?” Of course, the answer is $1.19, four dimes, four pennies and three quarters. When I told the dee-jay that he could do it with one coin fewer by substituting a 50-cent piece for two of the quarters, he seemed amazed and speculated that I must have a lot of time on my hands.

One evening shift as I was listening to the Gale Catlett statewide radio show, he told Jack Flemming that he was trying to recruit Jimmy Miller of Princeton at the time and he went so far as to encourage listeners in the Princeton area to talk to Jimmy and encourage him to become a WVU Mountaineer. I thought it was odd at the time that Coach Catlett would say something like that on radio, but when Jimmy Miller signed a letter of intent to play for the Virginia Cavaliers, I thought that was a good move for him. Ralph Sampson was there at the time and it looked like he was going to be one of the great collegiate athletes of that era.

A few weeks after that broadcast, I got promoted to a job as a stationary engineer at the DOE, and I was still on that job when I relocated to Mercer County about two years later. Time passed, and I eventually merged into the media industry with a weekly newspaper, and in that capacity I met Brenda Miller when I did a story about the Mercer County Retired Seniors Volunteer Program. Brenda eventually introduced me to her son Jimmy, and I smiled because I remembered that broadcast.

Jimmy had already finished his pro basketball tour of Europe by that time, and he was coaching somewhere. He had a desire to conduct a summer basketball camp for kids in Princeton and the surrounding area and shared that idea with me. He already had the event planned when he told me about it, and because of his enthusiasm, I offered to contact “Bullet” Bill Dudley on his behalf and ask if Mr. Dudley would speak to the campers. My only previous contact with Bill Dudley was a visit to his home in Lynchburg, Va., back in 1988 that my colleague, Tom Bone, recently wrote about. Tom’s column reminded me of Jimmy Miller’s Basketball Camp.

When I spoke to him on the telephone, Bill Dudley seemed like he was honored to be asked. I was truly humbled by his sincerity, but even more humbled when Mr. Dudley came to speak with the campers. As a UVA graduate, Jimmy Miller knew of the legendary Bill Dudley and as a lifelong Pittsburgh Steelers fan, I had known his name for a long, long time. Dudley drove from Lynchburg to talk with the kids in the camp and when he walked onto the Princeton Senior High School gym floor in street clothes, Jimmy and I were both awestruck. Dudley was not a huge person physically, but there was something in the way he carried himself that commanded respect form people.

I get a little choked up now as I think back to that moment. Bill Dudley didn’t give the kids a rah-rah pep talk. He spoke to them as men. He told them, quite frankly, about the importance of staying in school and getting a good education. He told them that he had never been a member of a championship team, and while that disappointed him at one time, he had absolutely no complaints about anything in his life.

To my surprise, the kids hung on every word. There were probably around 50 kids in the camp, and it made me proud of them to see how much they respected Bill Dudley and how they listened to every word he said. Bill Dudley played football in an era when players didn’t wear face masks on their helmets and when a $5,000 contract was huge money for playing football. He talked about what an honor it had been for him to play as long as he played.

When I offered to call Mr. Dudley on Jimmy’s behalf, I hadn’t really thought it through. That was a time when every young athlete wanted to be like Mike — Michael Jordan. I thought that maybe the message Bill Dudley would bring might not resonate with the young people. I was wrong. They listened and I listened. I sat alone on the bleachers and took notes for a story. I really felt that my capabilities as a writer were inadequate to convey how much that moment meant to me.

It was important to Bill Dudley, though. It was important enough for him to drive from Lynchburg to Princeton, talk to a group of young people for 30-40 minutes, field a few questions and drive back to Lynchburg. For me, it was a truly magic moment, just like Jimmy Miller’s “Magician” poster that hung in my office for the next few years. It was an honor for me to see the two UVA greats together at one time, just as it was an honor for me to see Bill Dudley and R.W. “Buz” Wilkinson together last summer on “Bill Dudley Day” in Bluefield, Va. Bill Dudley passed away on Feb. 4, at the age of 88, but at least in my mind, the memory of his love for his family, his home, his high school, college and the professional football teams he played on will live with me forever.

Bill Archer is a senior editor at the Daily Telegraph. Contact him at barcher@bdtonline.com.