Gilmer fulfills dream competing on ‘Jeopardy!’

RUSSELLVILLE — Russellville native Slade Gilmer fulfilled a lifelong dream when he competed on “Jeopardy!” in an episode that aired Oct. 7.

Gilmer lives in Florence with his wife, Jenny. He works in paint quality at Mazda Toyota in Madison.

The experience, he said, was as thrilling as it was challenging.

He faced returning four-day champion T.J. Fisher of San Francisco, California, and Claudine Lewis of Missouri.

Going into Final Jeopardy, Gilmer had $5,200. He wagered $3,200 and finished with $2,000. Fisher placed first, and Lewis placed third.

The Final Jeopardy category was Science Records with the clue: “It was introduced in 1992 and the record 43.3 was set in the high Andes, where stratospheric ozone levels are naturally low.”

Gilmer’s response was “What is cloud level?” Fisher missed the clue as well, but his lead carried him to a fourth victory with $16,600.

For Gilmer, just reaching the stage was a victory of its own.

“It was fun,” he said. “I’m a competitor — I want to win. But I knew it was going to be tough. T.J. was in my rehearsal group, and once he got the timing down, I knew it was going to be hard to beat him. He’s very fast and very smart.”

Contestants must wait for lights to appear on either side of the board before buzzing in, a system that demands nearperfect timing.

Gilmer said that challenge was one of the hardest adjustments after years of playing Scholars Bowl, where competitors can ring in as soon as they know an answer.

“If you’re even a fraction of a second too early, you’re locked out,” he said. “A quarter of a second doesn’t sound like much, but in that setting it’s an eternity.”

His mother, Beth Gilmer, an English teacher at Russellville High School, said Slade came by his love of trivia early.

“When he was very young, he went through phases of getting completely absorbed in a topic,” she said.

That passion for learning grew over time and shaped much of who he became.

“For a while it was presidents — he knew them all in order, their political parties, their wives’ names. And when he got bored, he’d read encyclopedias for fun.”

That curiosity ran deep in the family. Beth’s mother, the late Sue Page, was a devoted “Jeopardy!” fan who taped episodes and played along with Slade when he visited.

“It was really part of the fabric of our lives,” Beth said. “One of my last happy memories with my mother before she passed away was us sitting in her hospital room, playing along with ‘Jeopardy!’ together.”

Beth and her husband, longtime Russellville coach Larry Gilmer, joined Slade and his wife, Jenny, on the trip to California for taping.

“They do five shows per day — three in the morning and two in the afternoon — so it’s a long day,” she said. “Slade was there both days because he was the only one in his group who didn’t film the first day. It gave us the chance to watch all the others being filmed before his turn came.”

The family made the most of their trip, visiting Santa Monica Pier, the Hollywood Walk of Fame and even taking in a California Angels game.

“Ken Jennings was a real pro,” Beth said. “If he stumbled over a word, they’d redo it right then during a commercial break, and you’d never know watching the episode.”

Slade’s on-air anecdote drew laughs from the studio audience when he explained that he works in automotive paint quality — despite being color blind.

“They know about it,” he joked with Jennings. “Luckily, I just compare panels, so it’s not as bad as it could be.”

Among his favorite questions from the game were one about “Lyrical Ballads” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a subject that made his English-teacher mother proud, and another sports-related clue about being “double parked.”

“He also got a question about San Francisco,” Beth said. “That one made him happy because it meant he finally beat T.J. to the buzzer — and T.J.’s from San Francisco.”

Beth said seeing her son on the “Jeopardy!” stage was surreal.

“I had wanted this for him for so long,” she said. “He’s tried for years and made it into the contestant pool several times but never got called. Then this time, he finally did.”

The call came in March, but his initial filming was postponed. He was later invited back to tape in September, an opportunity he didn’t hesitate to accept.

Retired Russellville educator Sharon Daily, who coached Gilmer in Scholars Bowl from sixth grade through high school, said his curiosity and recall stood out early.

“He really loved learning,” she said. “He had an incredible memory and a genuine joy for knowledge. He was the kind of student who wanted to understand how things connected.”

Beth agreed, recalling her son’s unusual ability to remember both facts and moments.

“He could tell you what day we last had taco salad — two years earlier — and be right,” she said. “He just remembers things that way.”

Now part of a trivia team called The Pacers, Gilmer continues to put that memory to work. The group has even won a national trivia title in Las Vegas, Nevada.

He hopes his story encourages others to keep learning.

“You can do it,” he said. “But you have to put in the work. The things you study and learn really do come back to you — sometimes years later.”

He and Jenny share a love of travel and are working toward visiting all 50 states together. Since his appearance on “Jeopardy!,” they’ve also taken a trip to Cozumel, Mexico.