Decatur Resident Elected To College Football Hall of Fame

Danny Wuerffel, a resident of the Winnona Park neighborhood in Decatur, has been elected to the College Football Hall of Fame.

Wuerffel played quarterback at the University of Florida and won a Heisman Trophy in 1996, but he continued to make headlines off the gridiron when he left college.

After a brief NFL career, he volunteered with and became executive director of  Desire Street Ministries, which helps the urban poor, according to a 2012 profile in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He said,

“I spend a good bit of my time working with the ministry leaders, trying to encourage and help them. I spend a lot of time telling our story and fundraising. I’m the head storyteller and hopefully a good encourager to all those who are in the DSM family,” he said. He is, in other words, the maker of a charitable rain.

In 2011 he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, an illness of the nervous system which causes paralysis but is treatable.The ESPN website story about the hall of fame induction said,

Wuerffel said he is just about all the way back to his old self, but endured a difficult year and a half with little energy or strength. "You're trying to live a normal life with 20 percent of your energy, 40 percent of your energy," he said.

Wuerffel told the AJC in 2012 the prognosis was that he'll get better.

“I’m not sure when or how. It’s like a lot of things in life. There’s enough things to whine and complain about and enough things to be really grateful for. It could be a whole lot worse. And yet, it’s enough to legitimately be discouraged from time to time.”

The induction ceremony will take place Dec. 10 in New York City.