Ek's Note: I will be updating my rumor chart all day and be getting back to rumors later on, but we lost two Canadian legends over these past few days, Jeopardy's Alex Trebek and Howie Meeker...Hockey Night in Canada icon. Erik Brady, formerly of USA Today, sent me this fantastic piece remembering them both through some amazing stories surrounding these two bigger than life individuals who both will transcend their time here with us...I felt it was too good to not take the feature spot on the website today, and I know you will all agree. Thanks Erik!
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No one in life has all the answers. But Alex Trebek had all the questions.
Or, at least, all the answers in the form of a question.
We lost him on Sunday, at the age of 80, on the same day that Howie Meeker met his maker, at 97. They’ll go to the pearly gates together, a pair of telegenic Canadians with styles that could hardly have been more different.
Trebek you know as the longtime host of Jeopardy. Meeker you know if you are of a certain age and watched broadcasts of Hockey Night in Canada back in the day.
Trebek spoke with crisp diction and punctilious pronunciation, while Meeker spoke in squeaky-voiced bursts of folksy wisdom — all “lickety-split” and “goldarn,” with more “malarkey” mentions than Joe Biden. Trebek concealed warmth under a cool demeanor, while Meeker got so giddy about hockey that he all but floated.
One of them played for the Toronto Maple Leafs; the other played in celebrity games. Meeker player on four Stanley Cup winners in Toronto in his first five seasons, back when the Leafs did that sort of thing. Trebek played in a celebrity all-star game at the Aud in Buffalo in 1990, celebrating the 20th season of the Buffalo Sabres. (We’ll get back to that in a moment.)
One of them won the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s rookie of the year in 1947, beating out Gordie Howe — the other’s favorite player. Trebek would later shift his allegiance from the Red Wings, after Howe left them, to the Montreal Canadiens, who offered condolences this week in French and English.
Both were born in Ontario: Trebek in Sudbury, and Meeker in Kitchener. (Trebek always looked a little wounded when contestants whiffed on questions concerning Canadian geography.)
Each was teacherly in his own way — Trebek with the mien of a firm but fair professor who wants you to do well, and Meeker with the bubbling enthusiasm of a kindergarten instructor who delights in life’s small lessons.
Mike Buczkowski, a longtime exec for the Class AAA Buffalo Bisons, remembers both men fondly. The Bisons have been Jeopardy clues several times over the years. One time it was about how they held the record for best attendance in the minor leagues for a single season. So Buczkowski sent Trebek an invitation to come to a game, and got a postcard back that said: “Thank you for the invitation. I may take you up on it.”
He never got there, but Trebek probably meant it. He loved baseball — he held season tickets to Los Angeles Dodgers games — but was first, of course, a huge hockey fan. This year, he announced the first-round draft choice for the Ottawa Senators from his Jeopardy studio; he was a University of Ottawa grad.
Buczkowski watched Meeker avidly on Hockey Night in Canada when he was growing up, as hockey kids in American border cities often did in those days. “You could just tell that when he woke up in the morning,” Buczkowski said, “he couldn’t wait to tell you all the hockey information that he had in his head.”
And when Buczkowski played hockey at Canisius College, he remembers playing at SUNY Potsdam and looking up to see a banner that proclaimed the rink as a Home of the Howie Meeker Hockey School.
Budd Bailey moved to Buffalo in 1970, just as the Sabres were born. He was 14, “and what I knew about hockey you could fit in a thimble,” he says. He learned the game in part by watching Meeker and his magic telestrator on Hockey Night — and learned it so well that he would grow up to work in public relations for the Sabres and later cover them for the Buffalo News.
Bailey never did meet Meeker, but did meet Trebek — when he was a Jeopardy contestant in 1998. In preparation for his appearance, Bailey called the only person he knew who had been on the show: Mitch Gerber, a former editor at the Buffalo Courier-Express, who advised him to watch Jeopardy at home with a pen in his hand to mimic the clicker used to buzz in first.
As it happens, Bailey was working for the Sabres at the time of that celebrity game in which Trebek had played eight years earlier. In fact, Bailey had done color commentary on it. Trebek asked him about that during their chat session on the show.
“He said, ‘I heard you actually watched me play hockey. How would you describe my play?’ And I said, ‘You were a good stick handler, a crafty skater — but I couldn’t believe you missed the net on a breakaway.’ And he laughed, as did the audience. And then he said, ‘Thanks for bringing it up.’ ”
Bailey finished second but won a trip to the Bahamas. Contestants are asked not to tell anyone the results before their show airs. Bailey confided only in Gerber, his Jeopardy coach, who then was an editor at Washingtonian Magazine. When Gerber was on the show, in 1990, he had asked to be introduced not as from Rockville, Md., where he was living, but as “originally from Buffalo.” And he got his wish.
A few weeks after Gerber’s appearance, Trebek was at a book signing in Washington. Gerber got a quick interview for his magazine.
“Trebek looked at me intensely for three seconds, and he said, ‘Were you on the show?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Did you win?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ ”
Gerber won on his first show, came in second on his next one — and will never forget the experience.
We’ll leave you with this:
I’ll take Great Canadians for $2,000, Alex.
The clue: Two giants of their craft left us on Sunday.
“Thank you, Canada,” Bailey says. “I can’t cross the border to say thank you in person, but thanks.”
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