A Herald project 4 years in the making drops this week. Introducing ‘Return Man’
This week, readers of The Herald will get a first glimpse at a project that is four years in the making.
It’s called ‘Longshot: Return Man.’ It’s the fullest available account of the life of Jim “Butch” Duncan, a Lancaster, S.C., native, who was a generational football talent and a Super Bowl winner. He reportedly died by suicide in 1972 and left behind many unanswered questions.
This project, authored by The Herald’s former award-winning sports editor Bret McCormick, will feature a series of seven written stories, eight podcast episodes and an eight-minute video documentary. The pieces of this project will unfold over the next several weeks, with the first podcast available on iHeart Radio, Spotify, Apple Music and wherever else you get your podcasts on Tuesday.
You can now listen to the trailer, which is available now on podcast streaming services.
This is a delicate story, and it’s delicately and thoughtfully told. The Herald’s Alex Zietlow spoke with McCormick via phone earlier this month to preview the project’s publication.
Read the interview. It has been edited for brevity.
What is Return Man?
Zietlow: How did you come across this story?
McCormick: Somebody who owns a restaurant asked me for a list of all-time NFL players from our area, so I was looking on profootballreference.com, and I typed in ‘NFL players from South Carolina.’ And I was going down that list, and I came across Jim Duncan’s name. It caught my eye because it showed in this chart that he lived from 1946-1972, which is a pretty short life span. So I did a quick Google search of his name. And then when I read his Wikipedia entry, there was this really innocuous last sentence of the first part: It said something like, ‘He took his own life with a policeman’s revolver in a police station in Lancaster, South Carolina.’ Something like that.
You know, it was a pretty short Wikipedia entry, mostly about his football career, and there were a few links at the bottom of stories that were written about it, and I think one of them was Dave Anderson’s New York Times story from 1972. That was something that really piqued my interest. It seemed like, immediately, just really odd and suspicious. The fact that he died so young, I was just really curious about what happened.
Zietlow: What was your first reporting step?
McCormick: I think I found that New York Times story, and there was another one from Jet Magazine, and I think I started looking up (Duncan’s) family to see who was around, based on who were mentioned in those stories. I know pretty early, this might not have been my first or second day, but pretty early I talked to Dave Anderson, and then I talked to Ron Kisner, who wrote the Jet article.
Dave Anderson ... was a famous sports journalist. And he was in a nursing home when I talked to him. He actually passed away a year later. But, you know, it was just interesting to talk to him. He remembered very little about it. And likewise for Ron Kisner. But that’s where I started. Just to see if they remembered anything. And honestly, that kind of set the tone for this — that neither of them remembered much.
Dave Anderson, I remember, asked me, ‘What ever happened with that?’ And to me that was interesting because that really sums up what I figured out four years later, or what I knew at the end, which was that his life had just sort of been erased.
His death was uncomfortable. And for some it was a conspiracy, and for some it was just not that big of a deal, but for everyone involved, it was just uncomfortable. His existence in Lancaster just sort of went away. He’s the only person from that town who’s won a Super Bowl, which you know in South Carolina is a really revered achievement, and there is like no sign of him.
‘The fact that it’s like he didn’t exist is really not fair’
Zietlow: Did you think this story would lead you here?
McCormick: No. ... I mean, it was a story that people asked me, like, why was I digging it up? Why was I revisiting it? And I wanted to see if I could find out what happened to him, if there was more information out there that had been covered up or whatever... In some ways, I would say that it shows that we have not really progressed very much because we’re dealing with a lot of the same stuff. I feel like right now it’s different because these things are being talked about much more openly.
Zietlow: I could imagine you saying to yourself, ‘OK, I know why I’m reporting this story. It’s because I’m curious, you know? I’m trying to fill in the story.’ But, was there maybe an extra layer to why you were doing this?
McCormick: One thing I wanted to do was learn more about his life ... And I didn’t know if that would really help me figure out what had happened to him. ... His existence, now almost 50 years later, has up to this point been about his death. And I wanted to fill in the first part. That’s a reason to do this story. .. I grappled a lot with that question — of why was I doing this? There were people who were loved ones of the deceased main character who were curious about that. ...
I really think that a good result of this would be to restore his existence in some ways. I’m not being an advocate, but there should be a picture of him in that museum (in Lancaster). It doesn’t have to be a billboard or anything — just the fact that it’s like he didn’t exist is really not fair.
Zietlow: You were my predecessor. I know how busy you were while you were with The Herald, and you somehow simultaneously reported this story. When did you find the time for this project?
McCormick: There were times of the year when I could do a lot more on it. Like, the summers are when I would make a lot of progress. During football season, I would work on it in the mornings on Fridays, so Fridays were long days. It was just fitting it in, so it was like a passion project. Things that you’re interested in and driven to work on, you’ll find time for it. But the summer was when I did the most, for sure.
Zietlow: I know you’re someone who is known for successfully experimenting with multimedia reporting, but why exactly did you choose to go the podcast route?
McCormick: Yeah, I mean, (multimedia) is just the first thing I would think of. But in this case, it was my younger sister who suggested that she thought it would be a good podcast. So that’s when I reached out to somebody, I don’t remember who, to see if we had capabilities to do that. I knew a video would be cool, but the problem was, it was long ago, and there wasn’t much video that we could use. Like, NFL video would be hard for us to be able to use. It didn’t lend itself as much to video.
‘This is really similar to right now’
Zietlow: What lessons did you learn and what challenges did you overcome?
McCormick: The hardest thing was finding the time for it. I would get going on it, and then it would be time to go to a game. I never had good, undistracted momentum for a long period of time. So that really made it difficult. That also made it hard to keep pulling the same strings, or pulling the same reporting threads. I would go down 100 million rabbit holes, and it was really difficult to stay organized on what I was looking for, on where I was in the process.
I mean, I enjoyed the reporting, though. ... Putting it all together at the end has proven to be really complicated as well. Just to have the right amount of fairness and empathy and to really be careful and clear and not leave any fuzzy language in there because it’s a very delicate topic for dozens of people, maybe hundreds. So that was a challenge. ...
(Another thing) is there have been times that I thought that I’d done this selfishly, just to have a great story. I don’t think that was my overarching reason ... But when people are sitting across from me crying about this loved one who was killed in a weird way 50 years ago, and police didn’t dignify them with evidence of what happened or clear answers, and they’ve had to live with that for five decades? Well that puts your own life into perspective. That’s something that I’ve grappled with ... You know, should I even be doing this? So I hope readers, or listeners, take something from it.
If you think to yourself, you know, ‘Oh, this is really similar to right now.’ Well, then I’d hope the next thought is, ‘Why is this really similar to right now, from 50 years ago?’ I hope that’s something people can take from it. I hope people know who he was, a person who seemed like he’d be very fun to hang out with and who’d be a neat guy to be around. Some things just went really wrong in his life. Maybe it was something he could control, or maybe it wasn’t. Regardless of what happened to him, it’s tragic how he died.
This story was originally published January 26, 2021 at 11:37 AM.
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