Granville Daniel Trimper, who was a hands-on owner of Ocean City's famed seaside amusement park and was active in local politics, died Monday at Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin. He was 79.
Family members said no cause of death had been determined but that Mr. Trimper had been treated for an infection after knee-replacement surgery this summer.
"After a lifetime spent running all manner of careening, tilting, whirling or spinning mechanical thrill rides, the 70-year-old patriarch never seems to tire of the nightly spectacle," said a 1999 Sun profile. "Trimper's the big fellow clutching a walkie-talkie and surveying the flash of lights, the sonic blast of Top 40 tunes and the delighted squeals and screams of his customers."
The article noted that his family's conglomeration of rides, miniature golf courses, hotel rooms and gift shops - three city blocks' worth - has been a fixture on the boardwalk, and near it, for as long as there has been a boardwalk.
Born in Ocean City, he was the surviving grandson of a German immigrant, Daniel Trimper, who in 1890 founded Windsor Resort-Trimper's Rides, one of the country's oldest family-run amusement parks.
A lifetime resident of Ocean City, Mr. Trimper began work at the summer operation as a boy.
"He started working at age 10 or 11, and he was operating and setting up the Ferris wheel," said a 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. Mr. Trimper then helped disassemble the rides and took them on the road to carnivals and fairs throughout the Mid-Atlantic.
A 1980 Evening Sun article noted that Mr. Trimper had hired Maryland Institute College of Art students to help restore his 1902 Herschell-Spillman carousel, whose 52 animals and three chariots were carved by German immigrant artisans. Mr. Trimper resisted offers to sell off the carousel's figures, which are sought by collectors.
"The carousel is part of our family and part of Ocean City, and we want to keep it that way," he told the reporter.
Mr. Trimper served on the City Council of Ocean City for 18 years in the 1970s and 1980s until losing an election in 1988. He was at one time City Council president and spent four years as a Worcester County commissioner. He served briefly as interim mayor after the 1985 death of Harry Kelley.
