ahirbhairav wrote:Looks like it's the same Leonard Schmidt, Seniors Champ '92. If I got the right obit, he lived a long life till the age of 96. May he rest in peace. http://www.death-record.com/l/110780600 ... -J-Schmidt
That's not the right Leonard Schmidt. The one who was a former Jeopardy contestant passed away in 1994, less than 18 months after appearing in the Tournament of Champions.
"I was able to dig up a scan of the Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh from 1977 that has a picture of a Dr. Leonard J. Schmidt, an optometrist, and his face clearly matches up with the picture from 1992.
Here is the text of the April 14, 1994 edition of that paper with the news of Dr. Schmidt's passing. According to his SSDI record, Leonard was 67.
I wish there was a little more proof that "this" Leonard Schmidt that you're mentioning is the '92 Seniors Champion, trying to look for additional information....I'm thinking it's a common name and there could be several who are/were based in the Erie/Pittsburgh area.
Also the fact his status was NIA in the yearbook, I would certainly think a death from that long ago would have a yearbook status of Deceased.
My heart is pounding a bit from seeing this......if it's true it would be an enormous shock from the fact that within only 6 years of the '92 ToC, three of that year's competitors had passed in that timeframe.
ahirbhairav wrote:Looks like it's the same Leonard Schmidt, Seniors Champ '92. If I got the right obit, he lived a long life till the age of 96. May he rest in peace. http://www.death-record.com/l/110780600 ... -J-Schmidt
That's not the right Leonard Schmidt. The one who was a former Jeopardy contestant passed away in 1994, less than 18 months after appearing in the Tournament of Champions.
"I was able to dig up a scan of the Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh from 1977 that has a picture of a Dr. Leonard J. Schmidt, an optometrist, and his face clearly matches up with the picture from 1992.
Here is the text of the April 14, 1994 edition of that paper with the news of Dr. Schmidt's passing. According to his SSDI record, Leonard was 67.
I wish there was a little more proof that "this" Leonard Schmidt that you're mentioning is the '92 Seniors Champion, trying to look for additional information....I'm thinking it's a common name and there could be several who are/were based in the Erie/Pittsburgh area.
Also the fact his status was NIA in the yearbook, I would certainly think a death from that long ago would have a yearbook status of Deceased.
My heart is pounding a bit from seeing this......if it's true it would be an enormous shock from the fact that within only 6 years of the '92 ToC, three of that year's competitors had passed in that timeframe.
Bruce Naegeli died AFTER Jay Rosenberg and he was listed as deceased. Jay Rosenberg was also NIA.
jeopardyfan87 wrote:
My heart is pounding a bit from seeing this......if it's true it would be an enormous shock from the fact that within only 6 years of the '92 ToC, three of that year's competitors had passed in that timeframe.
Think how Jerome Vered must feel.
I used to be AWSOP but wanted to be more theatrical.
Rex Kramer wrote:Now I have that Jim Carroll song running through my head.
I went back to quote this, which I had read much earlier, because, yes, now I can't get the song out of my head again. Sometimes pop music knowledge is a curse.
I used to be AWSOP but wanted to be more theatrical.
Not to make light of anyone's death, but no Ahir, the Dave Madden who died today is not the same one as the J! champ. RIP Mr. Kincaid and Russell "The Professor" Johnson.
MarkBarrett wrote:Not to make light of anyone's death, but no Ahir, the Dave Madden who died today is not the same one as the J! champ. RIP Mr. Kincaid and Russell "The Professor" Johnson.
I did not know this until just now when I checked their wiki articles, but the Jeopardy Madden has the same birthday as me, though he is 14 years younger.
There have been some posts about my father, Leonard Schmidt, who won the 1992 Senior Tournament and then made it to the semi-finals of the TOC. He died in 1994 at age 67. He wasn't the 96 year old who was mentioned in a previous post. Friends and family are looking forward to seeing some of his former TOC competitors in the Battle of the Decades!
seaborgium wrote:I think the ones whose deaths we learned about via jeopardy.com and don't know anything more about could have the blurb "Reported as deceased in jeopardy.com's Tournament of Champions Yearbook" added to their J! Archive player pages.
Done. If anyone wants to do some macabre research, it would be nice to have dates of death, ages at death, causes of death, and obituary links for the following: Chris Shea, Kirk Ditzler, Jim Vercolen, Bruce Cox, Peggy Kennedy.
Seeing this thread reminded me to chase down a tragic rumor that I had heard a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, it happened to be true. Paul Boymel, the top champion of Jeopardy's first season in the Alex Trebek era, died on July 30 at the age of 67. http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignit ... d1a57e4b93
I met Paul decades after his Jeopardy appearance through community theater, although I never had the pleasure of performing with him in a show. Paul was extremely modest about his Jeopardy success--he never talked about it to his castmates and more than a few casts were surprised when I brought it up while congratulating friends after seeing a performance. I finally buttonholed Paul about his experiences and he said that the show was so new that he was able to fly to LA (for a reason unrelated to Jeopardy), audition, pass and appear on the show in the same trip. He modestly partly accounted for his success by noting that the (revived) show was so new that he was one of the only contestants outside of LA (in other words, the competition was weaker). I wish that I had known him better, not because of his Jeopardy fame, but because he was an overall good person. I was shocked and sad to learn of his passing.
I used to be AWSOP but wanted to be more theatrical.
Didn't see it posted here, but by just now stumbling across his profile page on the J-Archive site, 1991 Seniors Champion Lou Pryor passed away back in January of last year. Then I went to do a search for an obituary for him and I found this. According to the article, rumor has it he was invited to participate in last year's Battle of the Decades tournament, but he must've declined due to his illness. And now it makes sense that on the show's Yearbook page he wrote very little info on himself when the producers were gathering information from the former ToC Players for the BotD tournament.
Lou, you'll always stand out for me as a seniors champion who made it all the way to the finals of both the Seniors Tournament and the Tournament of Champions.
Would Cindy Stowell or Larry Martin count on this thread as well? They technically would have qualified for their respective tournaments had they outlived the TOC cutoff period. I know it's an old thread, but I'm also curious as to whom we've lost among the greatest in the show's history.
As I've done in the past doing Google searches on ToC players, sad to be the bearer of some sad Jeopardy! Senior Tournament champion news from back in October.