Historian Phil Brigandi, who died Dec. 12, spent decades constructing Orange County’s story

Former Orange County archivist and longtime local historian Phil Brigandi, who chronicled the area in more than a dozen books and countless articles, died Thursday, Dec. 12, at the age of 60.
Brigandi, a native of Orange, had suffered a heart attack four days earlier, said Chris Jepsen, Brigandi’s longtime friend and president of the Orange County Historical Society.
For more than four decades, Brigandi wrote about Orange County and its history, going beyond the dramatized, pop culture ver