There’s a popular Italian restaurant near Disneyland in Anaheim, California called Mama Cozza’s that’s famous for its walls that are covered with hundreds of framed photographs of celebrities, members past and present of the Angels baseball club and good friends of the Cozza family. One such friend was Southern California’s “Jack of all coin-op trades” George Duensing.
At the Aug. 29 gathering honoring the late George Duensing are his wife Carol and their daughter Terre with a photo of George and Harry Connick Jr.
George passed away on Oct. 1, 2019. To honor his memory, his wife Carol held a combination memorial/picture hanging event on Aug. 29 during which members of his family, as well as old friends from the coin machine business, swapped yarns about their favorite flying repairman and enjoyed a buffet lunch and champagne toast to boot.
Highlight of the afternoon, of course, was visiting the new wall photo hanging right there in George’s favorite booth (he’s pictured with singer Harry Connick Jr.).
In the above photo, Mantique’s Jim Shaffer says: “There’s my buddy right there!” Jim, with his partner Jeff Walker, sell refurbished antique games to the public; he said George fixed his machines on and off for almost 40 years.
The below photo finds Merrill Nottingham (who fixed jukes for George over the years), Carol Duensing, Betson’s Jeff Scheer and former Disneyland arcade maven Bill Hogarth.
