Most of the violins created by the Benders are now available for viewing and playing at Fret 'n Fiddle, the internationally known music store at 909 Pennsylvania Ave., in St. Albans, W.Va., operated by fiddler Joe Dobbs.
Before Arden Bender succumbed to cancer in January 2007, “he told me to do whatever I wanted to do with the fiddles,” Mrs. Bender told Dave Peyton of the Charleston Daily Mail. There were 105 completed fiddles and two unfinished ones. She gave more than 20 of them away to family and friends. She gave one of them to the local Cancer Society in Columbus and it brought $1,000 at an auction.
For the remainder, she asked her nephew James Baisden of Wayne to help her dispose of them. She moved into a smaller house in South Point, Ohio, and didn’t have room for all of them, she said. Baisden remembered Dobbs when he had a music store in Huntington. “I’ve always liked Joe and trust him,” Baisden said.