Obituary: Alex Trebek

 Just a few minutes ago, it was announced that Canadian-born game show host Alex Trebek, 80, has died after a battle with pancreatic cancer.  He had announced his fighting the disease and kept the public informed as to how he was doing.

He is best known for being the replacement of Art Fleming in the popular game show Jeopardy!  He was host for many, many years.

Trebek was married twice and had three children.  

He gained popularity in the seventies, often sporting a perm hairdo, which many men did back then, on game shows like The Wizard of Odds and High Rollers.  A YouTube of one of the series, most if not nearly all of the episodes destroyed because of the industry-wide practice of "wiping" master videotapes in order to be reused and save money:

Article:

After emceeing several programs in his native Canada, Trebek made his American hosting debut in 1973 on the short-lived NBC game show The Wizard of Odds. He went on to host several other variety programs and game shows in the late ’70s and early ’80s, including Double Dare and High Rollers.

 

But Trebek was best known for his role behind the podium on the long-running quiz show Jeopardy!, which he began hosting in 1984 when its daily syndicated version launched. At the time of his death, Trebek had presided over more than 8,000 episodes of the beloved program, and he had planned to remain host of Jeopardy! until at least 2022, when his new contract expired.

Pancreatic cancer is almost always deadly because it is a silent killer. It can be in the body literally years before people realize they are sick. More often than not, it is too late at that point.

Ironically, original Jeopardy! host Art Fleming also died of the same disease as Trebek.  He died in 1995.