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Leo Fender’s widow to release book about the guitar inventor and Orange County native

Guests view a display about Leo Fender at a Fender visitor center in Corona in 2011. Fender's second wife, Phyllis, is releasing a book about her late husband later this year.
(Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
By Bradley Zint

The wife of late guitar legend and Orange County native Leo Fender is releasing a new book later this year.

Phyllis Fender’s “Leo Fender: The Quiet Giant Heard Around the World,” which she co-wrote with Laguna Beach author Randall Bell, will be released Nov. 1 by Leadership Institute Press. It is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Phyllis Fender, his second wife, discusses how the famous inventor “never lived large or flaunted his fame,” according to a news release. “He lived in a mobile home, even after selling his company for $300 million (in today’s dollars). His daily routines and obsessions made him truly fascinating, and thanks to his enduring instruments, Fender’s legacy forever lives on.”

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Fender was born in Anaheim in 1909 and raised in Fullerton, where he died in 1991 at age 81.

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Twitter: @BradleyZint

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Bradley Zint

Bradley Zint left Times Community News in 2018. He was a general assignment reporter for the Daily Pilot, where he worked since 2010. At the Pilot, he also was a copy editor, classical music columnist and reporter covering Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. He previously worked in Hermosa Beach, Long Beach, Alaska and Massachusetts. He is a graduate of Cal State Long Beach, where he served as editor-in-chief of its campus newspaper, the Daily 49er.

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