The Durwood Project
The Journey Begins
Durwood Fincher is a unique individual from a mill village in Macon, Georgia who attended GSU and has gone on to a highly successful career as “Mr. Doubletalk.” He travels extensively as a corporate comedian bringing his flavor of wacky and hope-stirring humor to life before intimate to large -scale meetings. But Durwood did not have the energy level he needed to keep up his current pace of speaking engagements. He was not limiting his eating and was sedentary. Reflecting on his impending 60th birthday, and knowing that Ella Mae (his mama) and Roy (his brother) were both early deaths from heart disease he pondered his own health. Overweight, diabetic, hypertensive, and suffering from peripheral neuropathy and gluten intolerance, Durwood ”Mr. Doubletalk” Fincher was close in age to when his mother and brother died. His long-term friend and GSU nutrition faculty member Rebecca Black had expressed her concerns for his health and discussed an idea she had for getting him in shape.
Ms. Black proposed the idea of evaluating Durwood’s fitness during an undergraduate class and designing a program based on the recommendations from the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Diabetes Association for individuals with Type 2 diabetes. Even if Durwood was unsuccessful with adherance to the program developed, there would be benefit to the undergraduate students who could experience a fitness evaluation of an individual belonging to a “special population” group. Should Durwood be successful, the program could be chronicled and documented and utilized on the departmental web page to demonstrate the hand-on approach of the college and department to interested students. And of course, Durwood would be back in shape! Mr. Doubletalk, himself a GSU graduate who attributes one of his professors to influencing him in the area of phonetics and word origin, agreed for Ms. Black to take the project to the members of the departmental marketing committee. The project was unanimously approved by the departmental marketing committee and leaders. GSU nutrition and exercise faculty members and students began their collaboration on a program for Durwood in August of 2006.
The first fitness evaluation was conducted during Mr. Hansen’s Fall semester 2006 fitness assessment and exercise prescription (KINS 4231). Additional pictures can be found at The Exercise Program. Mr. Hansen developed the exercise program for Durwood and guided his student David Odum on its implementation. David Odum saw how much help Durwood needed. David was to begin an exercise science internship in Atlanta, where Durwood resides, so he volunteered to supervise his personal training. David Odum graduated from Georgia Southern University with a B.S. in Exercise Science in 2007. David began as Durwood’s personal trainer in his senior year at Georgia Southern. He continues to be Durwood’s personal trainer while attending physical therapy graduate school at Georgia State University.
