DAVID LEWELLEN

(316)258-0068

David Lewellen was born on July 5th 1978 in Wichita Kansas. He was the first Lewellen born into the carnival business. Like all carny kids he rode rides and pestered the operators. He ran his first ride at the age of eight when he operated the Moonwalk in Junction City Kansas.

Rex would buy him his first game the Speedball at age ten. David ran the Speedball for two years and then gave breaks to the help. When the family ran short on help David would fill in and operate the games as needed. When he turned fifteen David began to operate the Pub Darts on a permanent basis. David graduated from Andover High School in 1996.

When David turned eighteen he made the decision to leave the Ottaway show and play with another. In the winter of 1997 he purchased his first house trailer and took four game trailers and the Sizzler, which Rex had purchased the year before, and started a tour of duty that would lead him to six shows over a three year period. After spending the 1999 season with Toby’s Carnival, lack of progress towards having a show of their own led David and Dee to stage a forced purchase of rides. David was given four thousand dollars by Dee along with his own four thousand dollars and was sent to Texas where two rides were for sale. The rides were located through a web site called Usedrides.com. David located and purchased one ride, a mini-enterprise, from Gene Ledel. Another ride, the Teacups, was bought from Skip Bown. After returning home with a ride Rex saw that the future had come. David went all over the country picking up rides and equipment. David, designer of the original bumper car logo, designed the new Rock-O-Plane logo.

David would operate the show’s horse race derby and would over-see the set-up and tear-down of the kid rides. The mini-enterprise would never run on Lewellen Amusements but was traded to Ed Burlingame for a new Obstacle Course Bounce in 2001. This bounce was half owned by David the other half by his parents. In 2002 David brokered a deal with Walt Foster to buy a Skyfighter ride for himself and his sister Susan. The spring of 2004 had David paying a visit to Dave Hawthorne’s winter shop to buy his very first game trailer. With the help of good friends like Roy Turner the trailer was completely gutted and rebuilt. The trailer now holds two games, a Balloon Dart and a futurist cork gallery the Nerf Darts.  Early in the 2004 season Rex and Dee along with David and Susan would buy the show’s Merry-Go-Round. Dividing the ride three ways David now owned part of three rides and he purchased a Go-Gator in 2007. Unlike the rest of the family, having spent time on so many other shows has allowed David to see things from a different and unique perspective. This perspective had been a valuable asset to the show in the early stages of development. With the confidence shown in him by his family David Lewellen has been a large contributor to the start of the Lewellen Amusements carnival.

Lewellen Amusements