Irene Peslikis that Marxist Greek American Girl

Once during a visit through Gallery 899 in the Met Museum, I came face to face with a portrait by feminist American artist Alice Neel titled “Marxist Girl” in parenthesis the name (Irene Peslikis).  My Greek American Girl antennae immediately went up. Who was this Marxist girl with a Greek last name?  The portrait was completed in 1972, just about the time I was born. Who is this woman dressed in purple, my favorite color, languidly reclining in an armchair, quite open in her body language, her armpit hair exposed?

If you have not heard of her spoken about in your neat Hellenic Philoptochos women’s societies,  that is because Irene Peslikis carried a double anathema—a feminist and a communist—two labels that would keep any respectable media, woman’s association and good Greek girl club away.  In fact, even though she was active in the Greek community, especially around political left-leaning organizations, very little is broadcast about her in the male-dominated media machines.

But here, at this little hut on the outskirts of the wild forest of the digital galaxy,  I am going to bring her name and her legacy the attention they deserve.  In fact, after reading her story, I feel quite a bit of affinity with Irene who shares my name, my values, and my Queens working-class upbringing.

Irene Pesilikis was born in Queens to a working-class family in 1943.  She grew up in Flushing, Richmond Hill and Jamaica.  She probably went to Greek school and did all the typical Greek girl immigrant things she was expected to do.  After graduating from high school,  she attended Pratt Institute.  But as a rebel who had trouble following rules, she broke out on her own to found the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture in 1963.  She eventually graduated from Queens College (another thing I have in common with her) in 1973 and then with an MFA from City College ten years later in 1983.

While Irene Peslikis is not that well-known for her art, what she is famous for is her activism in both feminism and the arts. She was a fierce socialist agitator and quite vociferous as a feminist. (Theos na filae–may your daughter never grow up to be these things–ftou ftou.)   Peslikis was a radical feminist who organized the first show of Second Wave women artists and was a recognizable force in the NYC art scene in the 60s and 70s. 

This is from the Wikipedia entry for her:

She was a founder of the New York Feminist Art Institute, which ran a full-time radical feminist art education program for women for years. She founded one of the first feminist groups called New York Radical Women which eventually led to the Redstockings (more about that below).

Irene Peslikis revolved around other leading female feminist artists and activists including Cindy Nemser, Patricia Mainardi, and along with artists Marjorie Kramer and Lucia Vernarelli, they started Women and Art, which they deemed the “first women artists’ feminist-oriented journal.” She was also instrumental in founding Redstockings, a communist-leaning consciousness-raising organization that served as a collective receptacle for avant-garde women artists. (It was a spin on the disparaging title of “Bluestockings” to signal its leftist leanings.).    This experience helped Cindy Nemser, who officially joined Redstockings, solidify her position as a feminist critic and activist. Irene Peslikis acted as a guiding force and mentor for younger women artists that came into her circle.  It was thanks to her encouragement that Alice Neel advanced to becoming a famous feminist artist. The two were close friends, with Irene acting as a mentor-muse for Alice. Her involvement in Redstockings is legendary. She was a key organizer and participant of the Redstocking abortion speak-out at Washington Square Methodist Church in 1969.

Irene also eventually went on to found the NoHo Gallery  in Manhattan, one of the first cooperative feminist art galleries. Her political cartoons, widely circulated in the early Women’s Liberation Movement years & published in feminist journals and in collections of the feminist movement like Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement . She was also active in the Greek community.

Irene is listed with the Veteran Feminists of America.  Her obituary on their site reads: She wrote “Resistances to Consciousness” paper (printed in Notes from the Second Year), so important to the understanding of CR, and was a key organizer and participant of the infamous Redstocking Speak out on Abortion at Washington Sq Methodist Church. Anne Forer, an old friend from NY Radical Women described her as, “a loving, lively girl with spectacular generosity and helpfulness. She loved encouraging beginning artists. Because she loved art and the experience of doing art, she wanted everyone who wanted it to have it too. She was unique in understanding the uniqueness of each individual, and cherishing it above all.” Before she became disabled she was a karate giant and long distance biker.

She taught at the City College of New York, the College of Staten Island, the College of New Rochelle and Ramapo College, was active in the Greek community and published art and art history and criticism in Rozinanta, Demokratia and Eleftheri-Patrida.

There will be a memorial dedicated to her at the Studio School sometime in the future.

 

My big regret is not having found out about Irene Peslikis earlier.  I feel she would have been a great mentor to me, especially since we had so much in common. Irene Peslikis does not get the proper due she deserves, especially among the Greek immigrant community she was a part of.  She was the first do accomplish many firsts: she started an art school still in existence today,

 

Links to more info: https://nyfai.org/boardofdirectors.html

From the Redstockings Manifesto:

II    Women are an oppressed class.  Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives.  We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labor.  We are considered inferior beings, whose only purpose is to enhance men’s lives.  Our humanity is denied.  Our prescribed behavior is enforced by the threat of physical violence.

Because we have lived so intimately with our oppressors, in isolation from each other, we have been kept from seeing our personal suffering as a political condition.  This creates the illusion that a woman’s relationship with her man is a matter of interplay between two unique  personalities, and can be worked out individually.  In reality, every  such relationship is a class relationship, and the conflicts between individual men and women are political conflicts that can only be solved collectively.

Alice Neel: People Come First at The Metropolitan Museum of Art March 22- August 1, 2021

Artemis Simopoulos, M.D., Founder, Center for Genetics & Nutrition

Known for her groundbreaking seminal research on Omega 3 and Omega 6 fatty acids in the 1980’s, Dr. Simopoulos’ insights resulted in a clash with vegetable-oil lobbyists and the pharmaceutical industry. But soon after, her theories were validated scientifically and accepted by nutritionists and the public. Her books include the 2008 Aristeon Award-winning, The Omega Diet, and The Omega Plan. Among her numerous honors and awards is the first Presidential Award for Studies in the Field of Obesity and Weight Control.

Dr. Artemis P. Simopoulos is the founder and president of the Center for Genetics, Nutrition and Health, a nonprofit educational organization in Washington, DC, since 1990. Dr. Simopoulos was a founding member of the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL) in 1991, secretary/treasurer of ISSFAL from 1991 to 1998, and a member of the editorial board of the ISSFAL newsletter from 1994 to 2000. She is the founder and president of the International Society of Nutrigenetics/ Nutrigenomics (ISNN) and founder and chair of the World Council on Nutrition, Fitness and Health (WCNFH) since 2005.

A graduate of Barnard College in New York, with a major in chemistry, and a graduate of the Boston University School of Medicine, she is a physician and endocrinologist whose research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was on the nutritional aspects of genetic and endocrine disorders, evolutionary aspects of diet and fatty acids, and the importance of a balanced ratio of omega-6/omega-3 fatty acids in health and disease and in growth and development. She is the author of The Omega Diet (HarperCollins, 1999) and has edited numerous books and journal supplements, in addition to publishing over 300 scientific papers. She has been the editor of the Karger series World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics since 1989. She is the founder and president of the International Society on Nutrigenetics/Nutrigenomics.

The following is an interview she granted to Education Online speaking about the influences in her early life that led to her decision to become a medical doctor and later to a researcher in nutrition.

 

Career Choice:  Growing up in Greece after the Second World War, there were many children suffering from malnutrition and infectious diseases including tuberculosis. In high school we were taught biology and human development not by a high school teacher but by the director of public health of the town of Kalamata who was a physician. He was very enthusiastic about the importance of Nutrition, Physical Activity and their contribution to health. He emphasized that all of us could participate in taking responsibility individually and collectively about our health. In addition to the physical activity which we had three times a week for forty minutes each day, we were taught Greek traditional dances. I became very proficient in dancing and in 1949 I performed for Queen Frederika of Greece. I still love dancing—I could then say that it was Dr. Lambropoulos who inspired me about medicine, the different contributions that a physician could make not only taking care of the sick children but teaching, and motivating the healthy children to stay healthy.

When I came to Barnard I took the exam that all foreign students were required to take and was given 16 (one semester) credits which gave me a lot of confidence; I graduated in three years. At the interview for medical school, I was asked why I wanted to be a doctor. At the same time I was told by the interviewer that medicine was all consuming- what about children, family, etc. My response was that unlike the U.S., in Greece, the majority of dentists, pediatricians, dermatologists and public health physicians were women, who also had families. Why shouldn’t a woman have it all? Of course a supporting husband is the most important person in a woman’s life. I was surprised when the interviewer Dr. Greeley said, “I think you will make a very good doctor, you appear determined and disciplined-you will make a good pediatrician.”

Challenges: After five years at the National Academy of Sciences I went back to the NIH where I was appointed chairperson of the Nutrition Coordinating Committee in the Office of the Director, NIH. It was a very difficult job because the Institute directors are like Barons and do not want to have programs that their staff has to report to a coordinating chairperson who is independent of them, and reports only to the Director of the NIH. It was the most difficult job because of those feelings and beliefs of the Institute Directors. Dr. Frederickson, the Director of NIH wanted the committee to succeed and I had his full support because I worked very hard, was disciplined and read every funded grant on nutrition and insisted on the importance of Genetics. The biggest problem though was the people outside the NIH who looked at Nutrition Research as being an extension of Dietetics rather than metabolism and genetics.

In 1986 I left NIH because I wanted to pursue the role of Omega-3 fatty acids in health and disease and genetic variation and nutrition. I set up the Center for Genetics, Nutrition & Health a non-profit educational organization. We were very successful because we established the International Society of Fatty acids and Lipids (ISFAL) which operated out of our Center for the first seven years and led to expansion of research on Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids worldwide. Two years ago we established the International Society of Nutrigenetics/Nutrigenomics (ISNN), of which I am President. Every four years prior to the Olympic Games we hold the International Conference on Nutrition and Fitness (ICNF) at the International Olympic Academy at Ancient Olympia or in Athens, Greece. The conferences were the first to point out that physical activity in combination with diet which is consistent in composition with the diet we evolved in, are the major contributors to health and must always be considered as a dyad. Three years ago the World Health Organization adopted this concept.

Accomplishments: It is without saying that my research in defining the components of the traditional diet of Greece clearly showed that under complete natural conditions the Omega 3 fatty acids are found throughout the food supply in equal amounts to Omega 6 fatty acids and that a balanced ratio of 1-2/1 of Omega- 6/Omega -3 is necessary for normal development throughout the life cycle. This concept, which was totally new in the 1980’s created problems for me, putting me up against the vegetable oils lobby as well as the pharmaceutical industry. But I knew that my data were correct and persisted.  The book on “The Return of Omega 3 Fatty Acids into The Food Supply”, which I edited following the conference I organized at the National Institutes of Health and “The Omega Plan” (hardcover), “The Omega Diet” (paperback) for the public were fundamental for the recognition by the scientific community and the public of the importance of the balanced ratio of Omega-6/Omega-3 fatty acids. The tide finally turned and science triumphed. The Omega diet has been translated into Dutch, Swedish, French, Greek, published in Australia, New Zealand and the U.K, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Bulgarian and expected in Spanish soon. Knowing who is at high risk for the development of the disease will increase the motivation of people to take specific actions. The idea that each one of us is unique and that all of us or each one of us carries genetic variants, has been shown to have a strong scientific base.

Turning Point: Being at the NIH at the right time when in the late 70’s and early 80’s science was advancing and the political pressures were less so, allowed me as chairman of the NIH NCC for 13 years to develop many programs such as the Clinical Nutrition Research Units (CNRU) and about 100 requests for proposals (RFPDQ), in different areas of nutrition research over a period of 13 years. It also gave me the opportunity to “know what is coming down the pike” in research advances. Since knowledge is power I felt strongly that research data should be the basis for health improvement and to fight for the scientific truth.

Mentors: First and foremost, my husband Alan Lee Pinkerson, M.D., who was supportive of my interest in Research, taught me the importance to fight for scientific truth and scientific integrity. I was very much influenced by his thinking of the importance of medical research to improve health worldwide. In fact Alan showed me how to develop research proposals, defend them and implement them.

Dr. Richard Day, chairman of the department of pediatrics at the downstate Medical School in Brooklyn, with whom I took my straight pediatric internship and first year residency was a pioneer in the metabolism of premature babies. He was the first to show that you need to feed preemies early instead of the standard accepted ways in the 1960’s when babies were not given any calories for 72 hours. Dr. Day was of course right but at the beginning there was a lot of opposition to this “new concept”.  It was then that I learned that if you have research data that have been confirmed eventually the opposition subsides and we move ahead. I found myself thinking of Dr. Day when I was doing research on Omega 3 fatty acids and showed that you need to have a balance of dietary ratio of Omega- 6/Omega -3 for health.  Dr. Fred Barter, chief of Endocrinology and Hypertension Branch at the NHLBI, NIH, was very strict about accuracy and detail. You had to know the meaning of every single “datum”. You had to have a satisfactory explanation and if not you had to repeat the experiment, re-review the literature and find out why there was a difference or an inconsistency in the hypothesis and the data. This training helped me when I discovered that purslane is the richest source of the Omega-3 fatty acid Alpha-Linolenic acid since until then the “accepted fact” was that plants did not contain Omega-3 fatty acids.

Advice: It is essential to select a field that you feel you can contribute to. Furthermore your selection must command your interest, and succeed in your field, passion, discipline, dedication and determination. If you are lucky enough, then work is not really work, but a way of life. Try to work with scientists that “have already arrived” and do not expect to grow from your research but consider you a major contributor to their research effort. If you are sure about your data, be persuasive and aim to attract more supporters to your concepts and ideas. You cannot do it alone. New ideas make skeptics out of people. Give credit to your mentors, co-workers and family. I could not have done it without my husband’s support and 3 daughters support. In the end it is always the family that matters.

(interview reprinted from Education Update Online)

You can see and hear Dr Simopoulos live at Hunter College’s Great Authors Series this October 15th compliments of their Writing Center.  The talk is free but reservations required. More info at https://hunter.cuny.edu/event/best-selling-author-series-artemis-simopoulos/

The Evolution of the Artist’s Hand: Despina Konstantinides

Despina Konstantinides’ landscapes are based less on her eye and more on her mind’s eye.  Aflame with almost-neon-like yellow, orange, chartreuse in unexpected angles, the contours force the eye upwards and over almost in an electrically charged current.  These are both real and surreal; they are realistic allegories of inner landscapes that reveal by what they conceal, by forcing the viewer to see deeply into forms they cannot take for granted.  These landscapes call for the viewer to construct the meanings implicit in them, by digging deep and  through the tones and values of their own truth.  They are not generalized landscapes but unique manifestations of the “artist’s hand.” “Landscape is just an excuse to find form in painting, to find my hand in the painting and go through and beyond it,” Konstantinides explains.  “It is in that act of painting that forces you to become inventive.” 

I spoke long and deeply about the concept of the artist’s hand and finding it in a painting during my visit to her studio as part of LIC Arts Open Studios 2019, at Reis Studios, the artfully drawn building next to Silvercup Studios off 21^st Street. LIC Arts Open Studios is an annual event allowing public access into the process of many professional artist centered in the Long Island City area.  The concept of finding the artist’s hand was something she was introduced to by her painting professor in graduate school.  “To find your hand in a painting,” Konstantinides explains, “is to push form and then push again, going even further, going beyond yourself.”  It is the pushing against the self to go beyond the literal or everyday self to find the real self, in extension the same process that happens in a painting. 

This enlightening idea was instilled in her by her professor Barry Gealt in graduate school who observed that her initial landscapes were general and lacked any specific signature.  He pushed her to go from creating smaller life studies of 8X10” to creating in the large at least 5X5’.  According to his logic, you could not hide in a large painting. 

Finding her hand in her art has taken Despina many years.  Her development as a painter is slow, methodical, contemplative and experimental.  Her first painting was in 4^th grade, an oil painting of a vase of flowers.  She went on to receive a BA in philosophy from Trinity College in Connecticut.  During her undergraduate tenure, she participated in three semesters abroad:  with Pratt in Venice,  with Trinity in Rome,  with Burren College of Art in Ireland.   She obtained an MFA in painting from Indiana University and spent a summer semester in Florence. 

Yet, the first painting where she actually found her hand was not until many years later in the second year of graduate school in a landscape scene outside of her studio window.     Her career speaks to the truth that the process of becoming a painter mirrors the process of becoming yourself.  She recalls how this awakening dawned on her when she walked into Benozzo Gozzoli’s “La Capella dei Magi” in Florence. 

“It was the first experience of art that went beyond the narrative, that made me understand what was happening between the lines,” she notes. “It gave me the overwhelming feeling of walking into the space and wanting to open up. It’s no different from what good musicians, or good designers or architects do—they change your relationship to yourself essentially because it provides a different access point to yourself.” 

Another inner-eye opening lesson came from her love of Morandi.  “Through Morandi I learned to understand what sincerity means in a painting,” she shares.  It was the simple act of her professor, Richards Ruben, drawing a line in three ways that changed  the course of her understanding of the process.  He drew a light line, then a heavier line and then a third line, but this time with intention of sincerity.  She saw the difference immediately.  “ There is something that happens on the picture plane when as a painter you actually mean it. If you are sincere, and fully present  so that they painting becomes your world,” she says.  It was the sense of sincerity and touch that she found in Morandi that she saught to replicate in her process.  It was shortly after this developmental stage of studying Morandi that she was able to let go of the physical need to see a view but rely in her inner eye.  It was this period that set off her most inventive stage: she took off paintusing a palette knife; made tree limbs lighter instead of dark so the eye would be forced to work around it; included layering. 

In the beginning of her career she hated landscapes but now they have become her signature theme.  “I am addicted to landscapes.  I love painting because it knows me better than I know myself. It is what keeps me coming back to it. “

Her Hellenic heritage while not explicitly present in her paintings is again present in her process through what she explains as orexi”. What I most love about Greek culture she states, is the orexi in the way they approach living. They are always saying Yes! And going forward with things.  The appetite for creating new works and discovering herself has been strong for 30 years now.

It is the process that brings an artist’s deeper unfolding of self that is at the heart of her oveure.  As her graduate professor explained it, each person is the thinker of thoughts, there is a constant stream of talking in one’s head. But who receives thsose thoughs while you are talking to yourself? There is a listener within each thinker that receives those thoughts.  It’s like an inner echo.  Art gets to the listener within each thinker.There is a listener or the echo who receives thsose thoughts in each thinker.  Art gets to that listener between the talker and the echo of the talk.

I still think of painting as existing in the space between the thinker and the listener between the everyday self nd the more fundamental self,” she states, “This sis the drive behind the painting. To find that inner self.”

To trace the process of her becoming, both as a painter and as a person, check out her website, www.despinapaintings.com

Lula Vouderis: The Matriarch behind Deno’s Wonder Wheel

To celebrate #International Women’s Day and #Women’s History month here at #greekamericangirl, we are commemorating the passing of a Greek American woman synonymous with a New York City landmark: Lula Vouderis.  Lula passed less than a month ago, but her story captures the essence of the Greek American experience.  She was the matriarch of operations, the true rudder behind Deno’s Wonder Wheel, the iconic ride that associated Coney Island with nickel rides, Nathan’s hot dogs, and the childhood escape for thousands of immigrants who were looking for a cheap weekend getaway.  And it was all just a subway ride away.     

Lula’s life is the stuff that demonstrates how the dreams of many a hard-working immigrant in NYC become reality: hard work, resilience and more hard work.  It is an honor to document her story. 

The following account of her life is provided by her grandson, Deno Voudouris, who was kind enough to speak to me shortly after her passing:  

Lula Vourderis was born in Oneonta, New York in 1931 to an immigrant Greek family .  Her father was a hat cleaner and shoe repairman. A turning point came in 1935 when she at age 4 along with her mother and sister returned to Greece to visit family.  It was there that her mother contracted typhoid and passed away, leaving her and her sister orphaned.  Her father, still in America, had to come by steamer boat to take the girls back. This caused a delay of several months. In an effort to find a surrogate mother for his girls, he married another woman from his  local village. By then, World War II had broken out.  The US government allowed only citizens to return to America. As his new bride was not a US citizen, he felt reluctant to leave her in Greece.  Therefore, he decided to wait out the war in Greece.  The family stayed until 1946 when they were able to come back. The decision to stay in Greece during the German and Italian occupation nearly cost them their lives. The stories of the war haunted Lula forever. Her family suffered starvation. She never forgot the feeling of hunger. 

In 1946 the family returned to the United States, settling in Manhattan. To get a sense of the struggles they faced as poor immigrants without clothing or food, Deno recounts the story of the blankets they received from the Red Cross upon arrival to New York harbor.  The blankets came with the American flag on them. Because they had no other means, Lula and her sister transformed the blankets into jackets with the American flag emblazoned on the back.  Those jackets saved their lives many times from the cold. Eventually, her father was able to secure a peddler’s license, as was common for many immigrants at that time. He started selling hot dogs and when he heard that Coney Island was teeming with people on the weekends, he pushed his luck all the way to Brooklyn hoping to provide a better future for his family.   

But life was not easy.  It was a struggle to make ends meet with expenses and days sometimes 16 hours long, in the hot sun in the rain.  Lula’s grandfather would give her a $20 bill to deposit in the bank every morning (equivalent to $200 today) to give the impression that business was going well.  But what she did not know is that he withdrew the same amount at night so that he would give it back to her in the morning.  

And then another turning point in her life happened: she met Deno Verdouris.  

Lula and Deno’s Romance and the Engagement Ring that became the Wonder Wheel

Lula and Deno’s life began at the Wonderwheel.   They were both humble hot dog peddlers on the boardwalkselling roasted peanuts, pretzels and the famous hot dogs that put Coney Island on the map.  Their fathers knew each other and they crossed paths each evening when they parked their carts in the same garage.  Eventually Deno built the courage to propose to her.  The Wonder Wheel at that time and to this day was  the site of countless proposals and newlywed rides, being dubbed “the most romantic ride in the world.” (atlasobscura.com) 

Legend has it that he was too poor to afford an engagement ring, so he promised her the only ring he could—the ring behind her. He promised he would someday own the ride and give her “a ring so big, everyone in the world would see how much he loved her – a ring that would never be lost.” 

Although it took him nearly 40 years to do so, Deno eventually made good on that promise.  

That “ring” has become a national landmark and like his promise, an eternal testament to their love.  

Building a Boardwalk Empire

Success took time.  Building Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park was a process. They started from selling ice cream, then hot dogs, then to running snack bars and diners. It was not until the late 70s when Pappou Deno  became a mechanic for Ward’s Kiddie Park.  It was just at around that time in the recession of the 1980s when the previous owner of the Wonder Wheel was looking to find a buyer.  On June 7, 1983, Deno snatched his chance; he bought the Wheel for $250,000. There were no operating instructions for the ride, only a handwritten note on the back of a carton of cigarettes that said, “Good Luck.” From that moment on it was known as Deno’s Wonder Wheel.They would work it eventually adding more land until 1986 when the Wheel expanded to Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park.   

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Deno Verdouris, Lula’s grandson points out, “Coney Island was a place where immigrants could live out their American dream. It didn’t matter where you were from, where you prayed, or who you loved. It was then what it is today. You see people who half a world away are at war, but in Coney Island stand next to each other in line, their children smiling at each other before stepping into a ride. My grandmother lived for those smiles. Seeing so much war in her life, diverse people’s enjoying life together meant the world to her.”

Even though the operation had Deno’s name on it, it was Lula who was the unofficial manager and CEO of it all.  She advised her husband with the daily operations and was intricately involved across all levels of the business: from accounting, to purchasing, training employees, to frying potatoes, cooking chicken and shish kabob, making cotton candy and serving ice cream, and all this while raising her own three children and managing a household. The hunger she experienced in childhood left a lasting impression on her.  This is the reason her grandson attributes to the joy she took in feeding people, even customers who could not afford to pay.  

When her husband passed away in 1994, she took full control of the business which had become a boardwalk empire.  She passed the torch to her sons and eventually retired around 1995. Like the revered matriarch, she lived surrounded by her family with children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  Her room was never empty of extended family.  Her beloved sister passed away in February and on her deathbed uttered a prophetic wish to take Lula with her so they could be together.  In less than a month from that wish, Lula fell asleep at age 87, full of years and a life full of meaning.  

Her accomplishments will follow for many centuries after.  The “ring” that her husband promised her stands as a monument to their love. It remains an American landmark built on the energy, the passion, the perseverance of the Greek American dreams of success.   

The History of the Wheel is linked to America’s history of immigrants

The ferris wheel had been a conception of the a Romanian-born amusement engineer named Charles Herman around the turn of the century who wanted to create a ride that would combine the thrill of a scenic railway. From this, the Wonder Wheel was born.

The wondrous ride opened to the public at Coney Island on Memorial Day in 1920.  When Herman died, the operation of the ride was turned over to his son Fred. Fred maintained the wheel and even created his own ride, the “Spook a Rama” which operates nearby the Wonder Wheel to this day. Fred wanted out of the business by the 1980s but had trouble finding someone to take over the business. Enter Deno D. Vourderis.

Constantinos Dionysios “Deno” Vourderis was born in Aigion, Greece in 1920. He was the eighth of 22 children. He emigrated to the US at the age of 14 and later was given a peddler’s license by the US government. His first job was selling hot dogs from a pushcart in Manhattan.

Deno used his mechanical knowledge to land a job fixing and maintaining the kiddie rides at Coney Island in the late 70s. On June 7, 1983, Deno’s dream come true; he bought the Wheel for $250,000. There were no operating instructions for the ride, only a handwritten note on the back of a carton of cigarettes that said, “Good Luck.” From that moment on it was known as Deno’s Wonder Wheel.

Since Deno’s death in 1994 his two sons and their extended family still run the Wonder Wheel and the other amusements that make up Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park. The park has become a true institution of Coney Island, creating the many rituals that make it a one-of-a-kind place. 

The Wonder Wheel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 and five years later it, along with its neighbor the Parachute Jump, was designated an official New York City landmark. In 2016 Deno’s Wonder Wheel celebrated its 95th continuous year of operation. Since its debut it has provided over 35 million rides, with the 40 million mark approaching fast. (atlasobscura.com)