Hilda Wenner, 81, a musician and author who taught hundreds of Santa Barbara residents to play guitar during the folk music boom, died February 5 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
Gregarious and armed with a high-wattage smile, she commanded classrooms filled with beginning and intermediate guitarists through Adult Ed starting in the 1970s, with an encouraging, yet exacting, teaching style. Many played their first songs in that setting, swept along by the singular thrill of a roomful of guitars propelling the music forward despite individual stumbles.
Hilda and husband Adrian moved to town in the summer of 1960 for a job he’d landed teaching biology at the fledgling UCSB campus, which then had dirt walking paths and few buildings.
