Well, we knew it would happen, we knew he was ailing, but it didn’t make the hammer to the gut any easier: Alex Trebek died yesterday, a bare 10 days after filming what turned out to be his last Jeopardy! episode (which will reportedly air on Christmas Day). It didn’t sound like they planned for that to be his swan song, but the executive producer said he’d had surgery and they knew he was in pain, and that he delivered a little speech about togetherness atop his last half-hour that gave them all chills. Whether he sensed it was the end, or not, it sounds like perhaps a break for rest and recovery turned tragic very quickly.
In July, we did a slideshow in honor of his 80th birthday, which brought a lot of people joy. Please do revisit that, either via that link, or at the end of this post, where I will embed the gallery so we can see his face. Many of you may have shared your memories there of Trebek (we have Fug Nationals who’ve been on Jeopardy!) or just of your love of the show itself, but one can never mark a person’s legacy too many times. So feel free to talk it up in the comments here, too. Don’t worry about repeating yourself. Your stories are worth telling more than once.
If I could dub thee Sir Alex Trebek, I would, good sir. As it stands I will simply raise a potent potable in your honor.
