Game show host Alex Trebek poses for a photo in his Los Angeles home on Aug. 3, 1988. Trebek, who presided over the beloved quiz show “Jeopardy!” for more than 30 years with dapper charm and a touch of school-master strictness, died Sunday, Nov. 8, 2020. He was 80. (AP Photo/Alan Greth)

Editor’s note: Today’s column is written by Lori Rose, the sister of Friday columnist Karen Rose Wils and a former Daily Press staff writer.

ESCANABA — Oh, that song. That unforgettable jingle.

Pens in hand, eyebrows knit together, three competitors would battle it out like ancient warriors.

I speak, of course, of the famous “think music” from the game show Jeopardy, which lost its second host, the inimitable Alex Trebek, on Nov. 8.

The Canadian connoisseur of cool facts started his run on the show decades ago, going from a dark-haired young man with a flirty mustache to a distinguished gent with a white coiffeur.

Trebek lost his battle with pancreatic cancer after toughing out a year on TV and undergoing aggressive chemotherapy.

It’s bittersweet for me because Jeopardy was always a part of my life. In the old Art Fleming days, the show was on in the early afternoon and I seem to recall watching Mom take a break from her duties to shout out answers.

The family used to tease Mom that her favorite category was Potent Potables (alcoholic drinks) because of her years working at Spar’s Bar and the Highland Golf Club. In truth, my bookish Libra mother had a wealth of knowledge, from down-home remedies to books of the Bible.

The “old” Jeopardy was a low-tech affair, with cards manipulated behind a wall by humans instead of today’s familiar digital screens. Mr. Fleming looked like a cross between a kindly professor and an insurance salesman, to me.

My eldest brother, Jim — a future schoolteacher — would sometimes sit on the couch and square off with my mom. Jim’s specialties were math, science, and astronomy. Mom had an encyclopedic grasp of things but some of her favorite categories included medicine, religion and literature.

Brothers Mark and Dave weren’t exactly Jeopardy lovers. Mike, the future computer programmer, was a whiz at algebra, code words and for some reason the Third Reich (probably because he did a huge paper on it at Holy Name). Big sister Karen, as everyone who reads this column knows, is blessed with a tremendous knowledge of animals, the outdoors and science and nature.

As I grew older, I joined in on the fun. I wasn’t too thrilled with anagrams or categories that made you do stuff like count backwards in the blink of an eye. I was more attracted to geography, world history, British writers, movie trivia and rock music. Good old Potpourri wasn’t bad, either.

With its lively hosts, classic music and legendary announcer Don Pardo (later of Saturday Night Live), Jeopardy succeeded in its creator Merv Griffin’s goal of lifting the level of game shows on American television. I say this in 2020 with its array of people eating gross stuff, being stuck in a house together, testing out mates and heading for the wilderness to show their survival skills.

A son of a Ukrainian chef, Trebek got his start in his native Canada and hosted a few screwball shows before landing the Jeopardy gig. With his command of the board and ability to slip into foreign phrases, Trebek distinguished himself and according to NPR, some critics compared his credibility to newsman Walter Cronkite.

In his 37 years on the show, Jeopardy went from its typical categories to topics like heavy metal classic bands, which one of my cousins noted on Facebook this week. Also added were attractive young folks who filmed questions in remote locations.

Many people bought the home version of Jeopardy. I had a special VCR tape just for Jeopardy for the days when we were out of the house. My brother Jim taught a young guy, albeit for just a short semester, who one day went on to become a Jeopardy contestant.

Jeopardy was such a phenomenon that it ended up being parodied on SNL, with Will Ferrell and Darryl Hammond doing hysterically funny renditions of the actual celebrity Jeopardy episodes — a frequent guest being a sendup of the late, great Sean Connery.

In an interview a few years back, Alex Trebek said he honestly didn’t realize how big an impact he’d had on people’s lives. After he announced his cancer diagnosis, he jokingly stated he “had to” beat the disease because he had three more years on his contract.

He was a real human, though, famously choking up when one contestant didn’t write down a final answer but scribbled, “We love you, Alex.”

In a retrospective a few days back, CBS said a person like Trebek was a “much-needed figure of consensus” for times like these, when alternative facts threaten accepted knowledge and our reality as we know it.

My family will miss Alex Trebek. The show will go on, but we’ll always remember his knowing looks and little words of encouragement to the junior players, tomorrow’s leaders.

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Karen (Rose) Wils is a lifelong north Escanaba resident. Her folksy columns appear weekly in Lifestyles.