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Matriarch of Deno’s dies at 87
Deno Vourderis
Matriarch of Coney Island’s Deno’s Wonder Wheel
Amusement Park Lula Vourderis — pictured here
with her husband, Deno, in 1983 — died on Feb. 18.
after a years-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
ment to the community, according
to the alliance’s
head, who praised Vourderis’s
humility and bootstrapping
spirit.
“She was the epitome of the
American dream,” said Alexandra
Silversmith. “She was
not a flashy person at all and
didn’t want attention on all
the good things that she was
doing — she was definitely
someone who left an impact
on a lot of people.”
Vourderis, who often doled
out homemade fried potatoes,
shish kabob, and cotton candy
to visitors of the People’s Playground,
originally hailed from
upstate New York, and spent
part of her childhood in Greece
— where, at 6-years-old, she
lost her mother to typhoid, and
later struggled to get by while
living in the country during
World War II, according to her
grandson Deno Vourderis.
After the war, her family
returned to Manhattan, where
Vourderis’s father bought a
pushcart and began selling
hot dogs — a job Vourderis
took up just a few years later.
She soon met her future husband,
a fellow Grecian and
wiener seller. The pair spent
their weekends on dates in the
People’s Playground. And on
one hot day in 1947, Deno proposed
to Lula on Coney Island
Beach, promising her
the iconic Wonder Wheel that
loomed overhead in lieu of a
ring that he couldn’t afford,
the pair’s grandson said.
“He said to her, ‘I don’t have
money for a ring, but if you
turn and look at that big wheel
over there, I promise that one
day I’ll buy it for you,’ ” the
younger Deno said.
The couple went on to have
four kids — Aristea, Dennis,
Steve, and Helen.
Lula finally got her Wonder
Wheel in 1983, when the
the pair bought the more
than 60-year-old, 150-foottall,
400,000-pound ride
from owner Fred Garms
and dubbed it “Deno’s Wonder
Wheel.”
The duo then got to work restoring
the contraption, which
the city landmarked six years
later, in 1989 — three years
after the husband and wife
bought the land next door to
the ride, which they christened
“Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park”
for its range of other attractions
for kids and adults.
Vourderis spent a decade
cleaning and cooking at the
amusement park, where she
served food from the couple’s
snack bars — a passion
born from her own food-insecure
years during the war,
her grandson said.
“After going hungry, she
took joy in feeding people,
even if they couldn’t pay,”
he said.
Vourderis retired in 1995 —
the year after her husband died
— and spent the rest of her life
as a grandmother and greatgrandmother
in Queens, the
younger Deno said. Her sons
Dennis and Steve took over
the family’s business.
And through it all, Vourderis
never forgot her love for
Coney, her grandson said.
“After seeing so much war
in her life, diverse people enjoying
life together meant the
world to her,” he said.
Cops hunting Slope church vandal
monument, according to the
house of worship’s parish administrator.
“It’s a part of who they are,
a lot of them come every single
morning to pay homage
to our lady and pray in front
of this statue,” said Fr. Willy
Ndi. “To come and not be able
to do that, something they’ve
done for years and years, it’s
heartbreaking.”
The thief entered through
the church’s main entrance at
11:10 am, and emerged with the
three-foot-tall statue just three
minutes later, suggesting the
suspect knew his way around
the holy house near Fourth Avenue,
according to Ndi.
“He certainly knew the
place and he was quite comfortable,
very calm,” the priest
said.
The vandal then crossed
Fourth Avenue, before tossing
the shrine in a garbage
can near an entrance to the
Fourth Avenue-Ninth Street
station, breaking off the figurine’s
hand that held the baby
Jesus, and insulting parishioners
and all local Catholics in
the process, said Ndi.
“The statue of our mother
being placed in a garbage can,
it’s insulting,” he said. “It is
really sad.”
Church leaders plan to repair
or replace the statue in
due time, but will let the investigation
led by officers
in the Police Department’s
Hate Crimes Task Force
run its course before making
any decisions, according
to the parish priest, who said
clergy won’t display the statue
in the meantime.
Anyone with information
in regard to this incident is
asked to call the NYPD’s
Crime Stoppers hotline at
(800) 577-8477.
Priests are not displaying
Photo by Colin Mixson
the Our Lady of
Cisne statue while cops
investigate the theft.
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By Julianne McShane
Brooklyn Paper
Lula Vourderis, who
owned and operated Deno’s
Wonder Wheel Amusement
Park with her husband for
more than three decades,
died in Queens on Feb. 18.
She was 87-years-old.
The beloved matriarch
of the landmarked Wonder
Wheel, who died after a yearslong
battle with Alzheimer’s
disease, was a fixture in Coney
Island, according to its unelected
mayor and the founder
of the Coney Island Circus
Sideshow, who said he first
met Vourderis and her husband,
Deno, back in the ’80s
when he opened his home of
human oddities.
“She always had a glow
about her, a generosity and
friendliness about her,” said
Dick Zigun. “She was very
much a mother to all of us
in the amusement community.”
She lived most of her life in
the distant borough of Queens,
but Coney Islanders always
considered her one of their
own, Zigun said.
Indeed, residents recognized
Vourderis’s role in making
Coney the entertainment
destination it is today back in
2014, when leaders of neighborhood
group the Alliance
for Coney Island awarded her
a lifetime achievement award
for her decades of commit-
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Paper
A blasphemous bandit
stole and damaged a beloved
statue from inside a
Park Slope church, according
to cops, who said police
are investigating the incident
as a hate crime.
The sacrilegious snake
swiped the statue of Our Lady
of Cisne — a Catholic Marian
icon native to the Loja province
of Ecuador — from Ninth
Street’s St. Thomas Aquinas
Church on Feb. 20, devastating
parishioners who said
their daily prayers before the
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