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MARCH 3, 2019, BROOKLYN WEEKLY
Boro loses a Wonder woman
Lula Vourderis, matriarch of Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park, dead at 87
BY JULIANNE MCSHANE
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 years-long battle with
Alzheimer’s disease, was a fi xture
in Coney Island, according to its
unelected mayor and the founder
of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow,
who said he fi rst 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
commitment 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 fl ashy person at all and didn’t
want attention on all the good
things that she was doing — she
was defi nitely 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, where they
took in the sights and sounds of
Sodom by the Sea. 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.
And more than three decades
after her husband made his promise,
Lula fi nally got her Wonder
Wheel. In 1983 the pair bought the
more than 60-year-old, 150-foottall,
400,000 pound ride from
owner Fred Garms — whose father,
Herman, was its fi rst owneroperator
— 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 foodinsecure
years in Greece 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 great-grandmother
living with her family in
their Queens home, the younger
Deno said. Her sons Dennis and
Steve took over the family’s fun
business, which they run to this
day.
Doctors diagnosed Vourderis
with Alzheimer’s in the early
2000s, and Steve took care of her
until she died surrounded by her
family this month, according to
her grandson.
And through it all, Vourderis
never forgot her love for Coney Island,
a place she loved for its ability
to bring people from all walks
of life together, he said.
“It was a place where immigrants
could live out their American
dream,” her grandson said.
“After seeing so much war in her
life, diverse people enjoying life
together meant the world to her.”
REST IN PEACE: (Clockwise from above) Lula Vourderis and her husband,
Deno, posed before the Wonder Wheel in 1983, the year they bought the
attraction. Vourderis retired from the amusement-park business in 1995,
the year after her husband died. Vourderis and Deno at their wedding in
the late 1940s. Deno Vourderis