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Among the gifts I received from my dad, Les Gibson, were a love of reading and history, of arcane knowledge and trivial facts the latter of which made the game show Jeopardy! must-see TV. My earliest memories are of us kids riding in the car as he, a typesetter by trade who never went to college, would quiz us on one subject or another presidents, state capitals, great moments in American history.

He was Art Fleming in a Ford Falcon, and my brothers and I would shout answers as if our very status in the family depended on it and, when youre the only sister, mine did.

Dad, ask us the state capitals again, Id say, and Id be ready with Augusta or Pierre or Montpelier.

So Jeopardy! was a mainstay in our family, from Fleming in the 1960s to the return of the show with Alex Trebek as host in the 1980s, each of us trying to be the first to shout out the questions, which were really the answers.

At its core, Jeopardy! has always been a show where facts are facts, right is right and wrong is not only wrong it has consequences.

It was the show my dad and I watched every day together for seven weeks last spring from his retirement community in Florida, while he was on hospice with pancreatic cancer. The one half-hour where there were no sides in the culture wars, no arguments over cable news channels, no labels of liberal daughter and conservative father. Just answers and questions. The fact that Trebek was also battling pancreatic cancer was not lost on us. If Trebek could show up, dad would too.

He showed up every night for our Jeopardy! ritual until about four days before his death on June 5, answering questions such as, The northernmost city in the Andes Mountain range. Bogota, he said, in a voice faintly audible from his easy chair, a destination that each night took every bit of his strength to get to. Bogota, it turns out, was the peak on a mountain of knowledge from a lifetime of watching a TV game show.

After he died, I continued to watch, knowing that at least Trebek was beating cancer. Until he wasnt.

Alex Trebek died on Nov. 8, 2020, just 10 days after taping his last show. So we knew last Friday, the airing of his final show on Jan. 8, was coming. But that it came during one of the worst weeks of American history who could foresee that? Jan. 6, 2021, when an angry mob attacked the U.S. Capitol, will go down as one of those historic dates a young dad would have asked his daughter to recite.

Meanwhile, Jeopardy! goes on, and we do too, hoping to find a democracy where labels no longer define us. Trebek had some parting words for us, perhaps knowing he was nearing his end.

Were trying to build a gentler, kinder society, he said, and if we all pitch in just a little bit were gonna get there.

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The Answer Is... | Webster Kirkwood Times | timesnewspapers.com - Webster-Kirkwood Times, Inc.