How Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck Cost One Alumna $15,200

Deborah (Jensen) Ronning ’00, MA ’04 lived out her dream of competing on the long-running game show, “Jeopardy!”

Words by Tony Marchetti ’96, MA ’02

Deborah (Jensen) Ronning ’00, MA ’04 has been a fan of Jeopardy! since she was a child. Last March, after years of auditioning for the show, she lived out her dream of competing on the long-running game show. After her episode aired in June, she told us about her experience.

Deb said she arrived at the studio on March 4, and after going through makeup, signing some legal papers, rehearsing her “Hometown Howdy” commercial, and playing a few practice rounds, was ready to go. She explained that one week’s worth of shows are taped in a single day, and a random drawing determines which show a contestant appears on and what categories they’ll have to choose from.

Despite having a master’s degree in English from TCNJ, Deb confessed that, “My biggest fears were being in the last show of the day, and having literature come up as the Final Jeopardy category.” Naturally, both happened.

When the time came to film her episode, Deb’s nerves got the better of her at first and caused her to miss two early questions. She settled in though, and had a narrow lead over the other contestants going into Final Jeopardy. When that category was revealed as Classic Literature, “I nearly fainted,” Deb said. “I figured ‘Classic’ lit meant more of the Beowulf, Chaucer, Spenser, variety…[but the category] spanned the whole gamut,” she would soon find out.

Deb led one competitor by $400, and said the other “was far enough behind me that I was thinking about wagering to stay ahead of him if he got it right and I got it wrong.” She decided to wager $5,000 of her remaining $15,200. The final question was revealed: it asked which author first coined the term “the mother road” in reference to Route 66.

Deb, who admitted her knowledge of 20th-century American literature isn’t very strong (she said most of her classes were in British literature and drama), had a hunch the other contestants would write down “Jack Kerouac.” She said she was sure that was incorrect, but, “at the same time, I could NOT think of a better one…. I was searching my head for late 19th-century American poets that might have said it. I thought about Willa Cather for two seconds…[but] that time flies by. So I wrote down Kerouac, knowing it was wrong, and prayed my wager would save me.”

The first contestant’s answer was revealed—he had indeed written Kerouac, which host Alex Trebek revealed was incorrect. The other competitor, whom Deb led by $400, also erroneously guessed Kerouac. But he had wagered only $4,000, leaving him with $10,800—$600 more than Deb had after also getting the question wrong.

The answer was John Steinbeck, but Deb said afterward she hadn’t read The Grapes of Wrath since 8th grade, and is “admittedly weak” when it comes to Steinbeck’s other works.

“I second-guessed my wager for the rest of the day,” Deb said. “I almost wagered nothing, and it was killing me. Had it not been ‘my category,’ I might have, but…I brushed it off and took it as what it was: I had a blast, lived out a dream, and [knew] my family would no doubt be proud.”