Anna Mancuso Naquin
April 30, 2008
Edna Mae Westbrook Smith Guilfore
May 2, 2008
If you tire of daily watching Alex Trebek acting like a sniffy schoolmaster or experience difficulty clamping Trivial Pursuit pie wedges between your thumb and forefinger, the Friends of the Terrebonne Public Library may have the tonic for you.
The Friends hosts a trivia-question contest on the second Sunday of every month at 2 p.m. at the Terrebonne Parish Main Library’s large meeting room.
And although the competition is easygoing, most of the questions are not.
“We try to cover the world and everything in it,” said Ken Royston, 77, a retired Terrebonne High School English teacher and U.S. Navy veteran who originated the contest more than two years ago. “Science, food, drink, health, TV, literature, sports.”
The Friends does not promote the trivia contest. Anyone can participate. The cost is $1, but is free to Friends members.
The event began around six years ago when the Friends decided to host regular spelling bees, which eventually morphed into trivia contests held at Coffee Zone on Corporate Drive in Houma before moving to the library.
“Coffee Zone was fine, but it was more of a sports bar,” Royston said.
For the competition, contestants group into teams of three or four and are verbally asked questions by Royston, reading into a microphone. The questions come in three groups of twenty, followed by a bonus round of another 20 questions.
The groups write down answers and bet points at the end of each regular round based on the number of questions answered correctly. The group with the most points wins individual $10 gift certificates, good for purchases at the library’s periodic used-book fairs.
Royston, who has a master’s degree from Northwestern State University, either comes up with the questions on his own or takes them directly from trivia books. He usually composes the questions over a three- to four-day period.
The difficulty level runs generally from advanced high school to college level, but since all the teams receive the same questions, Royston does not have to be concerned about them being too difficult or too easy. He estimates the teams answer two-thirds of the questions correctly.
It’s a different story for the biannual individual competition, where the questions have to be written at a more consistent difficulty level since the contestants don’t answer the same ones.
Royston, who sponsored Terrebonne High School’s quiz bowl team during the 1980s, explained the appeal of trivia contests.
“Some people want to show off,” he said. “We all accumulate a lot of knowledge. It seems like it’s entertaining to make use of all this knowledge we collect. But many contestants say they enjoy the conviviality more than the trivia contest.”
Last year’s individual competition winner Jacques Porche, a Terrebonne Parish native who traveled the world as a Russian linguist with the U.S. Navy, agreed with Royston about the friendliness of the competition.
“It’s a wonderful way to bring the community together,” he said, “and a way to meet intelligent people.”
Porche introduced Houma financial consultant Pete Rhea to the monthly contest.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said LSU grad Rhea, a geography buff who likes Trivial Pursuit and doing crossword puzzles. “As we start to get older, our brain will atrophy if we don’t use it.”
While in high school, Rhea impersonated the great professional bowler Earl Anthony on the nationally-syndicated game show “To Tell the Truth” in 1972, hosted by Garry Moore. The celebrity panelists for the show on which Rhea appeared included Chita Rivera and New Orleans native Kitty Carlisle Hart. They tried to guess which of three participants was the real Anthony, who wore thick glasses, had a crew cut and was famously unhip.
Perhaps to his relief, none of the panel members picked Rhea as the real Anthony.
Among the other regular participants in the monthly trivia contest, Thibodaux interior designer Susan Blair brings her knowledge of old Hollywood stars and movies. Michael Sevante, a native Britisher who came to New Orleans in 1963, injects an international perspective.
Three other regular participants in the trivia contest have appeared on nationally-syndicated or network game shows.
Retired barber, artist and trivia buff Mike Papa Sr. won a trip to Hawaii as a contestant on “Name That Tune” hosted by Tom Kennedy in 1974.
William Coats, a 19-year-old Nicholls State University psychology student from Oklahoma, won $6,600 on kids “Jeopardy!” in 2000.
Coats was a member of three state-champion Vandebilt Catholic High School Division II quiz bowl teams and he currently serves as Vandebilt’s assistant quiz bowl director.
Coats has been on quiz bowl teams since the fifth grade and bones up by watching Jeopardy!
Glen Gomez, a former Tri-Parish Times editor who recently finished directing the farce “Perfect Wedding” at Le Petit Theatre de Terrebonne, participated in the “Fastest Finger” round of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” in 2001 but, unfortunately, did not make it to the hot seat to face Regis.
“I’ve read voraciously since I was a child,” Gomez said. “I enjoy being around people who use their brains, even if we’re not making rockets to the moon. It’s a heck of a lot of fun.”
Ken Royston, 77, a retired Terrebonne High School English teacher and a U.S. Navy veteran, stays sharp playing with the trivia gang at the Terrebonne Parish Main Library the second Sunday of every month.
