During Friday’s episode, in the category of “New York Colleges,” host Ken Jennings read out the prompt, hewing to the show’s inversion of the usual question-and-answer format: “In 2022 Tania Tetlow became the first layperson and the first woman to be president of this Jesuit university founded in the Bronx.”

The winning response—“What is Fordham?”—came from contestant Enzo Cunanan, a Cambridge University graduate student from Orlando, Florida.

Alex Trebek, Friend of Fordham

Billed as “America’s favorite quiz show,” Jeopardy! has aired in its current form since 1984, hosted for most of that time by Trebek, who died in 2020 at age 80 following a struggle with pancreatic cancer. He and his wife, Jean Trebek, had established a scholarship fund at Fordham, and they both received the Fordham Founder’s Award less than a year before his passing. Alex Trebek was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University in 2011.

The Trebeks’ scholarship is for students who come from East Harlem or Harlem, where their son, Matthew Trebek, FCRH ’13, runs a Mexican restaurant. In 2021, Matthew donated his late father’s wardrobe to a nonprofit that helps men coming back from homelessness and other struggles.

Alex Trebek said he was inspired to create a Fordham scholarship because of how his son’s Fordham education developed his intellect and leadership abilities and helped him become more well-rounded. “My hope for this scholarship,” Alex Trebek said in 2015, “is that it helps many other deserving students have that same transformational experience.”

After the TV star died on November 8, 2020, his son, Matthew Trebek, FCRH ’13, got the idea of donating much of his large assortment of clothes: 14 suits, 58 dress shirts, and 300 neckties, as well as shoes, belts, dress slacks, and other items.

The recipient? The Doe Fund, a nonprofit in New York City that Matthew Trebek has supported, which helps men coming back from homelessness, incarceration, and addiction who are seeking to rebuild their lives and find work.

“The Doe Fund made perfect sense, since these are guys who are going on job interviews and need second chances,” Matthew Trebek, a New York restaurateur, told The New York Times.

The management of Jeopardy! embraced the idea and helped deliver the clothes, the show announced on February 9. The items were sure to make an impact on the lives of those served by the Doe Fund, its president, Harriet McDonald, told CBS Weekend News.

“People lose a lot of dignity if they’re homeless or incarcerated, and then all of a sudden, they’re in a work environment,” she said. “If you wear a good suit—and, of course, whose suits could be better?—you fit in.”

A Host Who Gave the Utmost

Alex Trebek was beloved as the poised, cordial host of Jeopardy!, which he hosted for nearly four decades before succumbing to pancreatic cancer last November at the age of 80. Along with his wife, Jean Trebek, he was a prolific philanthropist who supported a variety of causes including World Vision, an international anti-poverty organization, and funded educational and cultural initiatives such as a public policy forum and innovation and challenge fund at the University of Ottawa, Trebek’s alma mater.

The Trebeks also created a scholarship fund at Fordham for students from north and east Harlem, reflecting their belief in the power of education, and they have given of their time to the University as well.

The University awarded Alex Trebek an honorary doctorate at its 2011 commencement ceremony and presented them with the Fordham Founder’s Award in January 2020 in Los Angeles.

Trebek emphasized kindness and empathy, telling the audience during one of his final Jeopardy! appearances, “We’re trying to build a gentler, kinder society, and if we all pitch in just a little bit, we’re going to get there.”

Matthew Trebek is co-owner of three Harlem restaurants—Oso, Lucille’s, and Pizza by Lucille’s—who also has a drive for service. He and his business partners created a weekly soup kitchen, Lucille’s Family Meal, for people in North Harlem living in poverty or transitional housing, as he told his mother in an interview on her web platform, insidewink. Held at St. Matthew’s Baptist Church, the soup kitchen aims for “a more dignified dining experience” for its guests, he said.

He told CBS Weekend News that his father would be pleased to see how his former wardrobe was being put to use.

“I think [it] just really falls in line with everything that he believed, and I think that would mean a lot to him.”

The iconic game-show host, who is living with stage four pancreatic cancer, arrived at the event straight from the studio still in makeup from recording five episodes of Jeopardy!. He told the crowd that he was there to provide comic relief from the formalities. Pointing to the statue, he noted that at 20 pounds it was the heaviest award he has ever received.

“That’s about a case of beer for those of you who keep track of statistics,” he mused.

On a more serious note, he acknowledged that his consistent appearance on the game show, despite his illness, has been an encouragement to others who are suffering.

“It’s humbling and it’s gratifying; because of the program that I have hosted for 36 years I have managed to touch the lives of so many people,” he said.

Fordham Trustee Fellow Armando Nuñez, GABELLI ’82, Trustee Brian MacLean, FCRH ’75, Alex Trebek and Jean Trebek, PAR, and Father McShane

He recalled a recent Lakers game that he attended where the sports announcer Mike Breen, FCRH ’83, leaned in to remind him that there were “a lot of people praying” for him.

“And if there’s one thing I have discovered in the past year it is that power of prayer; I learned it from the Jesuits when I was a kid, l learned it from the Oblates of Mary Immaculate when I was in boarding school,” he said with tears in his eyes.

The Trebeks would go on to send their two children to Jesuit schools. Their daughter, Emily, graduated from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 2015 and their son, Matthew, graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill with a degree in philosophy in 2013. Today Matthew is a restaurateur in Harlem, an area of the city that the couple has grown very fond of. They established the Alex Trebek Endowed Scholarship, making gifts of $2 million to aid Fordham students from North Harlem and East Harlem.

“You think Alex Trebek is a good man; you don’t know the half of it, he’s better than you think,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “He’s a brilliant man who is the nation’s school teacher, let’s admit that. As the host of Jeopardy!, he is our school teacher and we look forward to going to school every evening.”

Father McShane called Trebek a man of “quiet generosity” who, even in tough times, continues to teach.

“He teaches us about how to live each day with purpose, with focus, with determination, with love, and without being obsessed with oneself,” he said. “All that he does is outwardly directed. And he would freely say that the inspiration for all of this is his muse, Jean.”

In accepting the award, Jean Trebek drove home Fordham values that align with those of her and her husband.

“We understand how education, and probably more importantly, higher education, is one of the linchpins of society,” she said. “The many issues that we currently face are intertwined and affected by the leveling of educational availability.”

She said that she and her husband find the very idea of how a scholarship can change a life “awe-inspiring.”

“Once we are allowed to have the support that leads to an educated mind, that mind has the opportunity to be open and curious which allows for a fuller understanding and appreciation of our humanity both individually and collectively,” she said, noting that she has seen it occur in her own family.

“On a personal note, thank you, Father McShane and Fordham, for helping to develop our son Matthew’s personhood, both intellectually and emotionally, so that he can move through his life, which he does, with great confidence, responsibility, and creativity,” she said.

Her husband echoed her sentiments.

“If you have compassion in your heart, everything is possible, peace everywhere is possible,” he said. “If we are able to affect society in a positive way then our lives will not be for naught.”

Father McShane said he could not agree more with the couple, particularly as it related to the power of prayer. He then asked the crowd to join him to pray for Alex and “for his ministry.”

“That’s the one thing that has become clearer and clearer in the last few months, the school teacher has now become the minister,” said Father McShane, before reciting the Our Father and blessing Alex.

Earlier, eyeing the Archbishop Hughes statue during his acceptance speech, Trebek noted, “I have a thing about men with capes.

“People ask me at the studio quite often ‘If you weren’t hosting Jeopardy what would have you wanted to be in your life?’ And my response for years has been consistent, ‘Pope!’”

On leaving the stage, he assured the crowd that he had already tried to lift the 20-pound statue and that he didn’t want it sent back to his home. He was taking it home himself.

“I want it,” he said.

The event was hosted by Madeline McFadden-Nuñez and Fordham Trustee Fellow Armando Nuñez, GABELLI ’82, chairman of ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group and chief content licensing officer at ViacomCBS. In attendance were alumni, students, and newly-accepted Rams who will start at Fordham in the fall.

“You go into grad school thinking you know everything,” said Condon, a former business intelligence manager who retired from Verizon in 2018. He soon realized he didn’t know it all, but he began to develop a nightly routine that ended up boosting both his spirits and his range of knowledge.

“I’d go home and flip on Jeopardy! and I would answer a bunch of questions and I would feel a little better about myself,” he said.

Condon said he even looked a bit like the quiz show’s host, Alex Trebek, in the mid-1980s, something that came in handy when Halloween rolled around. 

“Somebody was having a costume party, and I was either very smart or very lazy—and probably very poor too. I had a suit, had a mustache, had curly hair,” Condon said. “So I went as Alex Trebek.”

Last summer, more than 30 years later, Condon got a chance to meet Trebek in Los Angeles, when he was selected to compete on Jeopardy! He became a two-day champion, winning more than $70,000 on shows that aired from October 15 to 17.

“Alex Trebek is incredible because he’s doing all this stuff he doesn’t have to do,” Condon said, noting that Trebek, who has been undergoing treatments for pancreatic cancer, was very generous with his time, both with contestants and the studio audience, spending hours talking with people and answering their questions. 

Trebek and his wife, Jean, have also been very generous to the Fordham community. In 2015, two years after their son, Matthew, earned a philosophy degree at Fordham, the couple established the Alex Trebek Endowed Scholarship Fund with a $1 million gift to benefit undergraduate students from Harlem. They recently doubled the size of their gift, expanding the fund to include students from East Harlem. The Trebeks will be honored with the Fordham Founder’s Award in Los Angeles in January 2020. 

Condon’s own journey to Los Angeles started in April 2019, when he took the Jeopardy! online test for the second straight year in hopes of becoming a contestant. He got a call in May asking him to take a written test and audition for the show in June. 

“‘If you don’t hear from us, you can take the test in 2021,’” Condon said he was told by one of the show’s producers. “So, you know, you go back to your normal life.”

That normal life included cleaning the upstairs bathroom at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, in mid-July when his phone rang. At first, he thought it might be another level of screening for the show. Then reality set in.

“This is it, this is the call,” recalled Condon, who taught history and economics at Cathedral Prep in Elmhurst, Queens, from 1987 to 1989.  

He and wife headed to Los Angeles in mid-August for the taping of what turned out to be Condon’s three appearances on the show. 

For Condon, the appearances flew by, as previous contestants had warned him. While playing, Condon said he was so focused on ringing in and the categories, he barely had time to pay attention to the other contestants.

“You pay some attention to other people’s scores, but it’s more when you get a ‘Daily Double’ and you have to do the arithmetic” to decide what to wager, he said. 

Condon joked that the reason he bet a round number—$20,000—during the second show’s Final Jeopardy round was because he “couldn’t do the arithmetic” quick enough to figure out exactly how much he needed wager to ensure that he would win.

The category was “World Leaders,” and luckily for him, he had the correct response. Trebek read the clue: “This man who ruled from 1949 to 1976 was sometimes called ‘The Red Sun.’” Condon wrote, “Who is Mao Zedong?” Before revealing Condon’s bet, Trebek said, “Did he wager big? I’ll say he did!”

“Made my wife really happy,” Condon said with a laugh.

Condon said his Fordham education helped him in a few spots during his run on the show. He credited a class called The Coming of the Civil War with helping him respond correctly to a Daily Double clue about which U.S. president preceded Martin Van Buren. (It was Andrew Jackson.)

Despite winning two straight games and earning praise from Trebek, Condon said “the absolute best part” of the experience was hearing his wife’s advice before the first taping.

“‘I don’t care if you win or you lose,’” she told him, “‘just have fun.’ And that absolutely meant the most to me,” he said.