Question: Which firm cheered on Jennings?

Published: Monday, Dec. 6 2004 12:00 a.m. MST

His perfect run is over, but it was a work of art while it lasted. He put Utah on the map and vice versa — and now he's richer than he ever dreamed and off to sunnier weather, pricing yachts and talking on TV.

Not Urban Meyer. He's still got a football bowl game to get ready for and a new job in Florida waiting after that.

Kenneth William Jennings III is the man who has already had the Gatorade bucket dumped over his head, figuratively speaking.

After his record string of 149 straight "Jeopardy!" victories finally ended last week, the "Joe DiMaggio of Game Shows" is retired.


I called Jennings' employer, the CompHealth Group (CHG) in Murray, just to verify that the computer software engineer who won $2.5 million over 75 "Jeopardy!" episodes really has left his day job.

"Yes, it's true," said Matt Birch, a CHG spokesman and friend of Ken's. "His last day here was the Friday before Thanksgiving. He's calling it a leave of absence because he says he wants to come back. He liked working here."

CHG, a national health-care staffing company with headquarters in Murray, has about 500 local employees, according to Birch, and none of them any more popular than the soft-spoken, unassuming — and recently departed — Jennings.

"Before 'Jeopardy!' nobody knew that he knew so much," said Birch. "We had no idea we had the Superman of 'Jeopardy!' working in IS (information systems)."

Seeing their mild-mannered colleague hit the big-time became a source of company pride.

"The people he worked with had 'Jeopardy!'-watching parties all the time," Birch said. "They'd set up a big projector screen and order pizza. They had a list of his victims on their wall. They loved every second of it."

Just before he left, Birch says, Ken rounded up as many of his closest co-workers as possible and treated them to lunch at Marie Callender's.


Birch said Jennings' many fans at CHG were as surprised as anyone that his demise came on such a relatively simple Final Jeopardy clue. In answer to "Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year," Jennings responded with "What is FedEx?" instead of the correct answer: "What is H&R Block?"

Get The Deseret News Everywhere

Subscribe

Mobile

RSS