A true culinary hero.

npr:

If you were young in the 1960s or ’70s and like many of us didn’t live around New York City, the first bagel you ever saw and enjoyed was probably a Lender’s.

So it’s with a sense of sadness and nostalgia that we pass along this, from The Associated Press:

“Murray Lender, who helped turn his father’s small Connecticut bakery into a national company that introduced bagels to many Americans for the first time, has died in Florida. He was 81. Lender’s wife, Gillie Lender, tells The Associated Press that her husband died Wednesday at a hospital in Miami from complications from a fall he suffered 10 weeks ago. The couple lived in both Aventura, Fla., and Woodbridge, Conn.”

-Mark Memmott