A final answer
By 
Great tribute to the latest casualty of this awful year:
On Sunday, the host who had presided over one of TV’s most cherished rituals for 36 years passed away due to complications of pancreatic cancer. At 80, he had spent nearly half his life—and the entire lives of many a Jeopardy! fan—delivering more than 8,000 episodes’ worth of answers and questions. For many viewers, Jeopardy! is something bordering on sacred. Trebek—patient, wise, and occasionally wry—was unambiguously its center of gravity.
I interviewed him for the book about Jeopardy! that I have spent the last two years reporting. He was characteristically humble about his role—anyone who had been on a show as long as he had would be revered the way that he was, he insisted.
Forgive me the correction, but I think the judges will agree with me: Trebek was a singular talent and a singular delight, whose decades at the helm of Jeopardy! put him in rare company. He was a modern-day Walter Cronkite, as contestant Ken Jennings once put it—an emblem of knowledge and sincerity and a tradition unto himself. For those who grew up in the blue glow of his “We hope you’ll join us tomorrow, folks,” he felt like a member of the family.
R.I.P.