Granville Daniel Trimper
1931-2008
Granville Daniel Trimper, who owned and operated Ocean City’s historic seaside amusement park aptly named Trimper’s Rides, died of heart disease Monday (fall 2008) at Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin, MD. He was 79. In addition to the lifelong commitment to his own family and the family amusement park, Trimper was extremely active in local politics.
Born in Ocean City, Trimper was the grandson of a German immigrant, Daniel Trimper, who in 1890 founded Windsor Resort-Trimper’s Rides, now one of the country’s oldest family-run amusement parks.
Trimper consistently resisted offers to sell the carousel. “The carousel is part of our family and part of Ocean City, and we want to keep it that way.”
“He [Granville] started working at age 10 or 11, and he was operating and setting up the Ferris wheel,” said his grandson, Gordon Brooks Trimper of West Ocean City, the park’s operations manager. “The wheel was the first ride where he had sole responsibility,” For many years Trimper’s rides, which faced the town’s inlet at the south end of the boardwalk, closed at Labor Day. Trimper then helped take the rides apart and took them on the road to carnivals and fairs throughout the Mid-Atlantic states.
A 1980 Evening Sun article noted that Trimper had hired Maryland Institute College of Art students to help restore his 1902 Herschell-Spillman carousel, whose animals were carved by German immigrant artisans. Trimper consistently resisted offers to sell the carousel. “The carousel is part of our family and part of Ocean City, and we want to keep it that way,” he told a reporter…
READ THE REST OF THE MEMORIAM IN THE DEC. 2008
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The historic Trimper’s Rides in Ocean City, and the great efforts of the late Granville, was most recently featured on Fox News’ “Strange Inheritance”. CLICK HERE FOR CLIPS >>>
