'Jeopardy!' host Alex Trebek gave a powerful speech months before his death

Brut America

"You never have to say you're sorry for doing a kindness to someone else."   Shortly before passing away, "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek spoke on healing America — with kindness.

Transcript

00:00I talk about the phrase the United States of America and I express a bit of lament over the

00:08fact that the emphasis on the word united has decreased in recent years. We are not as united

00:16as we once were. We are a divided society. I'm not talking about politics now. You've got

00:22democrats, you've got republicans, conservatives, liberals. That's going to go on for years and

00:27years and years. But there are other divisions in our society which are having a negative impact

00:32as well.

00:49We realized, my wife Jean and I, that we have led a privileged life and we have been very fortunate

00:56to have advantages that don't come to everyone. And we feel it is incumbent upon people like us

01:04to at some point in your life to start putting back into the system to help those who are less

01:10fortunate. Because when you do that you help unify the community, the society, the division between

01:17the poor and the rich. The division between the races, the white and people of color. Divisions

01:28between those who can easily access government resources and those who can't. Divisions,

01:35and we see this more and more with the COVID-19 situation, divisions between the young people

01:42and the old people. And we wanted to do something to try and help alleviate some of the problems

01:50caused by those divisions. One of the best ways to make friends, I've discovered, is to do something

01:56nice for somebody else. And so if you can extend a hand and say, hey you're not doing too well right

02:03now, what can I do to help you? Then you have gone a long way towards eliminating some of those

02:10divisions. In our daily lives when we're confronted by little problems we often kick the

02:15can down the road. We say I'm not going to worry about that right now. I will solve that problem

02:21later on. And then all of a sudden that little dripping faucet becomes a major leak and could

02:26endanger the house. Now it's a serious problem. Governments can't do everything. And the message

02:32we wanted to send to our fellow members of the community is that, yeah, there are a lot of

02:42businesses that have had to close. You know, restaurants, bars, movie houses, sports venues,

02:50anywhere where large groups of people gather. But there are businesses that are still going strong

02:57and there are people who are employed by those businesses who are earning a living. And if those

03:03people could just look into their hearts and say, you know what, I'll have one less latte today.

03:09I'll have one less cigarette and I will take that little bit of money and earmark it to help

03:16my fellow man. That would go a long way to bringing us all together again. I feel very strongly that

03:27you never have to apologize. You never have to say you're sorry for doing a kindness to someone else.

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