For 36 years, Alex Trebek delivered evening entertainment to millions of viewers as host of the popular game show Jeopardy! on NBC. Trebek died earlier this week after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 80.
Christopher Short, a Crawfordsville resident and former Jeopardy! contestant, has a unique perspective of Trebek. In addition to his five-game winnings of over $96,000 and an appearance on the 2011 Tournament of Champions, Short has spent the past decade as the chief editor of Geeks Who Drink Pub Quizzes.
“I can speak with maybe a little more perspective than some people on this because of my job as a chief editor of a nationwide trivia company,” he said. “I understand how very important it is to have people who stand up for facts and who are arbiters of fact and who you can trust and stay calm in a high-pressure situation.”
Short has often heard Trebek referred to as “the middle-brow,” for his calm demeanor, something he believes rings true.
“He and the entire Jeopardy! organization have for so long showed the country, ‘here is what you need to know in order to be a well-rounded person and in many cases a good citizen,’” Short said. “He feels like a link to an earlier and better time.”
Traditionally Jeopardy! taped five episodes per day, giving Trebek 300 questions to prepare for each day. But to the audience Trebek never seemed to waver and often gave the viewers an inside look at his personal interest in each contestant. And Short took notice of that.
“The preparation time he has in the morning, I can’t even imagine that much, then to be able to make any kind of personal connection,” Short said. “His comic timing was so great in those interviews and you could always see how much he loved interacting with the contestants that would really give it back to him.”
Short and Trebek exchanged one of those moments during a show.
“Christopher Short is a pub trivia editor from Indiana whose pub quiz recently had a queston about the rules of Jeopardy!, and that caused a bit of controversy. What was it?” Trebek said.
“Yeah that’s right. We asked, basically, what the lowest dollar amount is that you can win the game with, and uh, one of our players actually had the audacity to email and say that he thought they were incorrect on that. So I had a pretty good time, you know, directing him to several websites that showed my authority on the matter,” Short answered.
After laughter filled the live audience crowd, Trebek said, “Feels good when you’re a person of authority, right?”
Short said “exactly yes,” and Trebek got the last word by saying “Yeah, I feel good, too.”
That was who Alex Trebek was. Smart, but funny. Courteous, but never missing an opportunity to take a light jab at his contestants. Truly one of American television’s greatest treasures.
