WALL - Richard J. "Dick" Friedel, whose Circus Drive-In diner was a landmark for generations of Jersey Shore residents and visitors, has died at the age of 95.

Friedel died peacefully at home on Oct. 27, his family said.

He left his mark at the Shore with the Circus, a diner on Route 35 that stood out among the crowd with a big-top tent, car-hop service and a roadside sign of a smiling clown, lit up at night, that beckoned motorists.

"It just made great memories," Holly Basile, 52, said of the Circus, where she worked as a teenager and led what would be an unsuccessful campaign more recently to save the diner from the wrecking ball.

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Friedel's death marks the end of an era in a town whose business landscape has changed in recent years. The Circus has given way to a retail center. Down the road, The Lanes at Sea Girt, a bowling alley that operated for 61 years, was sold last year to a developer and demolished.

Friedel was born in Bogota, Bergen County. According to his obituary, he attended Miami University, where he met his wife, Barbara, known as "Bobbi," and took a job working in sales for Revlon.

Friedel and his family moved to Wall in 1954. He told the Asbury Park Press he came up with the idea for the Circus by visiting other diners, honing in on carhop service that could cater to a population that was migrating to the suburbs and was increasingly dependent on their cars.

He chose the name and the theme because "everyone loves a circus," he told the Asbury Park Press in 1994.

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The Circus opened with space for 16 cars. It expanded to 25 cars, along with a patio that could seat 220. Its menu grew from hot dogs and hamburgers to one that had 140 items, including soft-shell crabs. Friedel, a private pilot, would fly to Maryland to pick up the crabs himself.

State Sen. James W. Holzapfel, R-Ocean, worked in the kitchen at Circus when he was a teenager growing up in Point Pleasant Beach and recalled making endless onion rings by hand.

Friedel and his wife made a good team, Holzapfel said, with Friedel's dry sense of humor balancing Bobbi's more outgoing personality. The couple worked upwards of 60 hours a week, and they managed to maintain order — no small feat given the potentially combustible mix of teenage workers, customers showing off their cars, and summer at the Jersey Shore.

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But everyone got along, Holzapfel said, and the Friedels treated their employees fairly, whether they washed dishes or waited on cars. The Circus made an imprint on the state senator, who keeps a picture of the former diner in his office at home.

"This was really a decent restaurant that catered coincidentally to people sitting in their cars and eating," he said.

The Friedels and their daughter, Carol, operated the Circus until 2003, when they sold it to William Kayal. Bobbi died shortly after. The seasonal diner survived another 14 years, but eventually, the property on heavily traveled Route 35 attracted the attention of developers, who bought it and recently built a retail center.

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"It stood the test of time," Friedel told the Asbury Park Press after the Circus was sold to developers in 2017. "I was proud of it, and I'm still proud of it. And I'm sorry to see it go. But, like everything else, nothing is forever."

Friedel also is predeceased by his son, Richard Jr. He is survived by Carol, who lives in Wall, his cousin Lorraine Timmerman and his niece, Caron Flagg, of Point Pleasant, and her three daughters.

Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter who has written about the New Jersey economy and health care industry for more than 20 years. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Wall NJ Circus Drive-in founder Richard Friedel dies at 95