Boro loses a Wonder woman
Lula Vourderis, matriarch of Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park, dead at 87
COURIER L M BR B G IFE, MARCH 1–7, 2019 3
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-yearsold.
The beloved matriarch
of the landmarked Wonder
Wheel, who died after a yearslong
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-yearsold,
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
owner-operator — 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 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