Every Jeopardy! contestant has an Alex Trebek story. Here’s mine.
There are three groups of Jeopardy! contestants: those who Alex liked; those who Alex disliked; and those who Alex couldn’t care less for. No offense to the last category, of course; Alex taped five shows at a time, and most contestants appear just once, creating a steady stream of names and faces that no gameshow host could hope to keep straight.
I’m fortunate to have been in the first category. One of the best, most surefire ways to get into this privileged group was to make Alex laugh. You didn’t get to interact with him very often. You really only had the contestant interview – brief as it was – and whatever opportunity you could pounce on during the game itself. Of course, improvising could incur the subtle disdain of the man himself, so, you know, proceed at your own risk.
For me, I impressed him with my formidable – and, for a Southerner, sadly natural – impression of Forrest Gump when I answered a question about college sports films. (His response: “You did that very well. Too well, I fear!” With that rare but delightful chuckle.) I also amused with a horrendous Italian accent when answering a question about Marco Polo, confused and entertained him when I mentioned my friends and I invented a sport in high school named Women’s Field Hockey, and cracked a joke after winning the semifinal and sharing the stage, although I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. Something stupidly charming, I’m sure.
The story isn’t really about Trebek liking me, though. It’s to show that there were many sides of Alex, most of which viewers at home and most contestants don’t get to see. He played the role of disappointed professor oh so well, and the times where he was mischievous, sarcastic, or downright rude often went viral. But he was also charming, funny, personable, and – above all – humble. He viewed the contestants as the stars of the show, not himself, and he always said his main job was to make them look good. And he did.
But he was also kind when he didn’t have to be. Therein lies my story.
I was invited to the 2010 Tournament of Champions because I was, for some luck-filled reason, a Jeopardy! champion. I showed up in my Air Force uniform, sporting the shining silver bars of a first lieutenant, because at the time, I was an intelligence officer – or, so I appeared to the audience. But my time in that role was running out.
In 2009, while “deployed” to Panama City, FL to serve as a watch officer for US Northern Command, I visited the base psychiatrist to have my medication adjusted. Earlier that year, I had began taking Wellbutrin for depression, after a difficult first year of marriage beset by moodiness, lethargy, and strife. But it wasn’t really working (I wouldn’t find out why until later). So, the base psychiatrist decided to try me on Celexa. I was 24; it’s not supposed to be administered to anyone under the age of 25.
Fast forward one month. I was home, in Little Rock, having been sent there by my commander. Not for performance, or behavior. Because the medicine had caused a severe reaction – not physical, but mental. For the first time in my life, I had spiraled rapidly into a tempest of suicidal thoughts, a dark whirlwind that frightened me and everyone around me. I couldn’t stay where I was, so, I had to leave.
One month later, I was checked into a psych ward at a mental health hospital after the suicidal thoughts got worse. And worse. To the point where my unit commander – whose son had committed suicide around my age, a few years prior – drove me to Bridgeway himself. It was there that I was diagnosed with bipolar II.
Intelligence officers have Top Secret security clearances. You can’t have one if you think about killing yourself. Or if you’re subject to mood swings. Although none of it was my fault, and I was actually good at my job (this may seem surprising to some of you who have known me since), I couldn’t keep a clearance. Which meant I couldn’t be an intel officer anymore.
Which means I couldn’t be in the Air Force.
While on temporary duty, waiting for the med board to finalize their decision to send me away, I had to schedule the Tournament of Champions appearance. One of the contestant coordinators, the Jeopardy! legend named Maggie who is universally adored by every contestant who has ever met her, asked me how things were going, and I mentioned to her my predicament. She was sorry, and sympathetic, and besides my unit commander, she was the only one outside my family who had expressed those sentiments.
For someone in the grip of depression, with a very uncertain future, it meant a lot.
Fast forward once more to the end of my quarterfinal match. For the first and last time in my Jeopardy! career, I had missed a Final Jeopardy question that would’ve sent me into the semifinals. My brain had already started slowing down by then. I wasn’t quite as sharp or smart as I was in college, or the first go-round. And, given just how shitty the rest of my life had become, I felt crushed. You can see me hang my head after getting the question wrong, if you watch the episode. I’ve never seen it.
After the show, you get a few scarce moments with Alex on stage while the credits roll on TV, just chatting about nothing in particular. I was standing there, heartbroken, in my uniform that made me feel like a complete impostor, trying to appear normal but probably failing. I have no recollection of what was said, only of the empty feeling when I left the stage, heading for the audience to watch the rest of the games and dreading the flight back home, where nothing awaited me except for things I didn’t want to face and didn’t believe I could handle.
Then I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned, and Alex was standing there, frowning – but not like he did when you missed a question, or mispronounced a French word. It was a kind frown, a concerned one.
“Joey,” he said. “I hear that you have to leave the Air Force?”
“Yes sir, I am. It’s a medical discharge. Mental health problems.”
He nodded. I didn’t know at the time, but Alex was almost a veteran himself. He signed up for the Canadian Air Force, but during training, he decided he had a brighter future elsewhere (an astute and correct prediction). Veterans always had a soft spot in his heart.
“Do you know what you’re going to do now?” he asked.
I shrugged, a lump forming in my throat. “I don’t really know, to be honest.” I half-smiled. “I’ll figure it out.”
Sympathy – no, empathy – sparkled in his eyes as he looked directly into mine. “Joey, I have no doubt that you’ll figure it out and do well with anything you decide to do.”
My eyes started burning, and I told myself, “You are NOT going to cry in front of Alex Trebek.”
“Thank you, that means a lot,” was what I said instead, and he smiled. “I wish you the very best. Take care, okay?”
I nodded, shook his hand, and left. He went back across the stage, back to the dressing room to prepare for the next game that was getting spun up. That was the last time I ever spoke to him. And yet, even today, 10 years afterward, while I remember very little about the game itself, I remember the encounter completely.
Because he didn’t have to talk to me. No one expected him to – I certainly didn’t – and if he had went back into the bustle, a very busy man, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.
But he took time – a precious minute or two he really couldn’t spare – and spoke words of kindness that were in desperately short supply in my life at that time. In the midst of the coldness of disappointment and isolation, in the daily anxiety and fear of what would come next, in a world in which I felt so far away from just about everyone in my life, and even myself, those moments with Alex at the end of my Jeopardy! journey were everything.
I played five games and won a total of $105,000. I experienced the rarified air of winning on Jeopardy!, of forever having the title of Champion. I met amazing people, felt the thrill of every question, right or wrong. I fulfilled a lifelong ambition, a dream I never imagined I’d be able to achieve.
But of all the memories, that time where Alex showed kindness that was unexpected and desperately needed was the one I cherish the most. And the rest are a distant second.
Alex Trebek had flaws, but he was a great person, one of the best I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. Far more than you would think watching at home. A celebrity who was unconcerned with fame, only with doing the best job he could on a gameshow that was and is so important to many people for so many reasons. He was a treasure to everyone who knew him.
And he forever occupies a special place in my heart that is now heavy with sorrow.
I don’t know what will happen to Jeopardy! now, and I don’t particularly care. I know it won’t be the same. And that’s okay. Because my memories of the show – his show – are also memories of Alex, and in them, forever intertwined, the game will never end.
RIP.
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