Alex Trebek - The Answer Is . . .: Reflections on My Life

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A bit of potpourri for those who are hoping to become survivors.

Of all the projects in my professional career, I am starting off on this one with the most serious misgivings. Over the past thirty years, Ive been approached many times by publishers and writers to do an autobiography or consent to an authorized biography, but Ive always turned them down. Ive had no interest whatsoever. I didnt think I had anything pertinent to say to the world. And my life was not particularly exciting. Im the typical product of my generation: a hardworking breadwinner who looks after his family; does all the repairs he can around the house; enjoys watching television; and thinks a simple dinner of fried chicken, broccoli, and rice is just fine, thank you very much. Ive shown up to work at the same job for thirty-six years and have lived in the same house for thirty years. I respect and like my colleagues, and have a family that I dearly love. In this, Im no different from many other people. I have never seen myself as anything special. Thats why if you listen to Johnny Gilberts announcement at the opening of Jeopardy!, Im introduced as the host rather than the star. I insisted on that when I took the job back in 1984.

But then early in 2019, all of that changed when I was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer.

At first, I was reluctant to share this news with the world. Basically, Im a private person, but ultimately, I decided to do so because I wanted to stay ahead of the tabloids. I didnt want them printing or manufacturing all kinds of crap. But upon making the announcement, I quickly discovered there are millions of people out there who seem to care and who feel I have played an important part in their lives. Ive received boxes and boxes of cards and letters from people around the world offering their support, encouragement, advice, and prayers. There is a very large glass display case inside the Jeopardy! studio that is filled with them. Its a humbling experience, but it is one that I thought deserved recognition. It made sense to respond to that outpouring of care, good wishes, and prayers. So I started to come around to this idea of a book.

Ive got a very good friend whose opinion I respect a great deal. Hes very intelligent, very insightful. As soon as he got wind of the fact that I was considering this project, he immediately fired a lot of questions at me.

Whats in it for you? he asked. I dont mean financially. I mean, what do you expect the benefits of a book will be for you? Youve been in the public eye quite a bit for more than a year now, and the reaction has been very positive. Should you not be concerned that by revealing stuff from your past you might lose some of the goodwill that has been coming your way? Is this just an end-of-life reconciliation or settling of old scores? Is it basically what you did when you revealed your diagnosis: an attempt to stay ahead of the tabloids and any writer out there who is looking to publish an unauthorized biography that would rely on old clips and fake news? Or is there more to it than that?

See how bright he is?

That started me thinking: What is my goal here? Is there more to it than that? Like most people, I want to be liked. And I want people to know a little more about the person they have been cheering on for the past year. Sure, staying ahead of the tabloids is part of the reason also.

Once I made the decision to proceed, I quickly determined what this book would not be. This is not going to be a standard memoir. Were just hitting the highlights. Its a series of quick look-ins, revelations. Its an aperu of Alex Trebek, human being. What is he like? What has he done? How did he screw up? Things like that.

Except for contributing the occasional Jeopardy! clue, Im not a writer. And I especially do not feel comfortable writing about myself. When I met with Governor General of Canada David Johnston a couple of years ago, I got a chuckle out of him when I said, Your Excellency, you and I have a lot in common. Were both from the Sudbury region. Weve both played hockey with Phil Esposito. You have written twenty-two books, and I have read twenty-two books.

Ive spent a career communicating verbally. So try to look at this as a conversation in which I get a chance to reveal a lot more about myself than I have ever done on Jeopardy! Some of what you will discover will undoubtedly surprise you. Some of it may even shock you. Im going to do my best to recount things completely accurately, but I dont want people to hold me to that, and I dont want people coming back at me and saying, You didnt get that right.

I will try to remember as much as I can, but the cancer, chemotherapy, and my age have taken a toll on me. My powers of recall have slowed. When I was younger, I had a great memory. I didnt forget anything. Now my memory is fading, and I feel Im in the same boat as Mark Twain, who in his seventies said he remembered only things that never happened. If that occurs here, tough shit.

Revelation #1: Alex Trebek swears. (Though, as Ill explain a bit later, not as much as I used to.)

All right, lets start with something of significance. Approximately 1 billion, 850 million years ago, a large comet struck North America a mighty blow in what is now the province of Ontario, and, along with scattering masses of valuable industrial minerals as far away as Minnesota, left what is now called the Sudbury Basin, Earths second-largest crater, eighty-one miles in diameter.

The large impact filled up with magma containing nickel, platinum, copper, gold, and other metals, making the area one of the worlds major mining sites. My hometown of Sudbury lies just outside the southern rim and for many years was known as the Nickel Capital of the World.

My father, George Edward Terebeychuk, was this little Ukrainian immigrant who had earned his passage money to Canada mainly by playing violin at weddings and parties in his hometown of Nuyno. He arrived from Ukraine in the late 1920s. He was on a train bound for Manitoba to be a farm laborer, but when he got to Ottawa, he decided he didnt want to work on a farm, and he jumped off. He had a cousin, my uncle Mike, who lived in Toronto, and he touched base with him. Once Dad mastered the fundamentals of basic English and changed his last name to match his cousins, Mike got him a starting job in the kitchen at the King Edward Hotel, which was one of the two large first-class hotels in Toronto.

The exterior of the Nickel Range Hotel, where I spent so much of my youth.