Hello everyone. Today I will be writing a tribute story about Alex Trebek. He was a long time host of the television game show Jeopardy. He started hosting the show on September 10, 1984. I have been every watching every day since the beginning. He passed away on the morning of November 8., 2020, of pancreatic cancer. His remaining episodes will air until Christmas Day. We will see if the show continues with a new host or not.

My earliest memory of watching Alex Trebek on television was the game show called High Rollers that first aired on NBC-TV on July 1, 1974. His first game show that he hosted was called The Wizard of Odds. It first aired on NBC-TV from July 16, 1973, to June 28, 1974. The opening of the show is on YouTube. High Rollers involved contestants rolling a pair of dice to win prizes. Actress Ruta Lee was the co-hostess. I loved that show and watched it every day during the summer of 1974.

The other TV game shows that he hosted during the 1970s and 1980s that only lasted one to two years. Some were very memorable, like Pitfall, Double Dare, Battlestars, and Classic Concentration. I have been watching some of them on the Buzzr game show network. Those shows are enjoyable to watch. Alex seemed like he was having much fun hosting those shows. He made the contestants feel comfortable.

Alex Trebek started hosting Jeopardy on September 10, 1984. I remembered the first version of Jeopardy in the late 1960s and 1970s when Art Fleming was the host. It wasn’t high tech back then, but it was fascinating to watch. I was very young to understand the categories that were present on the two rounds and the Final Jeopardy round. Don Pardo was the long time announcer on the show and later was the announcer of Saturday Live for many years.

When Jeopardy started airing in 1984, I wasn’t home when it aired at 3:30 p.m. I was attending DeVry Institute of Technology. I recorded the show every day on my VCR. I would come home from school, and after dinner, I would watch the show with my mother. We still watch the show together every day. There were times as the show was interrupted by some breaking news or some sporting event. That would aggravate me sometimes. I would set time on the VCR overnight in case the show will broadcast on that particular night. Sometimes it did. Right now, I have the DVR that does that, and it is much simpler.

I enjoyed watching Alex Trebek hosting Jeopardy everyday. Sometimes he would do impersonations of Bela Lugosi, Humphrey Bogart, and talk in a British accent. Many times the contestant would write their Final Jeopardy responses with humor. He would always laugh at them. I miss him already and, I am sad about his passing. We have the rest of the year to watch the remaining episodes. He was a television icon. Thank you. Pete Kastanes. Admin for Vanished Chicagoland Facebook Page.