Murray Lender | Bagel mogul, 81

Murray Lender, 81, who helped turn his father's small Connecticut bakery into a national company credited with introducing bagels to many Americans, died Wednesday at a hospital in Miami from complications from a fall, his wife, Gillie Lender, said.

The couple, who were married more than nine years, lived in Aventura, Fla., and also kept a home in Connecticut.

Mr. Lender was perhaps best known from promoting Lender's Bagels in TV commercials. "He was courageous, strong and an example to everyone to show how one should go through life with a vision, ambition, a goal and with success," Gillie Lender said.

His father, Harry Lender, immigrated to the United States from Lublin, Poland, in 1927 and opened what would become Lender's Bagels that year in an 800-square-foot bakery in New Haven. Two years later, he had his wife and two sons, Hymen and Samuel, brought over from Poland to join him, according to a history of Lender's Bagels on the company's website.

At the time, bagels in America were sold mostly to Jewish families who enjoyed them with lox and cream cheese.

Murray Lender was born in 1930, and four years later Harry Lender bought a 1,200-square-foot bakery in New Haven as the business prospered. Hymen, Samuel, Harry, and a younger brother, Marvin, all went on to work for the family business. Murray would serve as the company's chief executive and Marvin as president.

The Lenders said they were the first to begin selling bagels in packages to supermarkets, in 1955. In 1960, two years after Harry Lender died, the Lenders said, they started freezing their bagels so they could ship them outside of New Haven without worrying about them becoming stale - the first company to do so. The frozen bagel would make its way to households across the country that had never had them.

The Lenders sold the family business to Kraft Foods in 1984. Pinnacle Foods Group L.L.C. has owned Lender's Bagels since 2003.

He remained company spokesman after the sale to Kraft, making commercials and appearing on talk shows.

A stroke 13 years ago left Mr. Lender unable to talk, but that didn't dim his enthusiasm for life, his wife said.

- AP