George Fullerton

Christy Coobatis is a college music professor whose amazing musical journey includes playing professionally before he was a teenager, beta testing guitars for Leo Fender, and helping to create a guitar synthesizer for Allan Holdsworth! Christy’s latest and longest tenure as a teacher has been at MiraCosta College in Oceanside California, where he started in 2000. He grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, taking lessons at one music store in town and teaching at another. In elementary school, he played at the local fair and at 12 he was wearing a tuxedo and playing in a wedding band!

Geraldine Herrera was working at J.C. Penney in Anaheim, California, right out of high school while preparing to attend Fullerton Junior College to pursue her dream of becoming a schoolteacher. While there, a regular customer, Irene Vasquez, encouraged her to take a new job that would raise her pay from sixty-five cents to a full dollar an hour. Geraldine agreed and soon found herself at a workbench winding pickups for a fledgling guitar company called Fender. The year was 1949. She worked part-time and during summers, side by side with the company’s founder, whose workbench was j