Although Jim Duford knows he has plenty of energy left, like any good baseball player, he knows when to hit the bench.

After nearly 68 years doing business on Polson’s Main Street, Duford is stepping down at the end of the month as owner and manager of First Resort Clothing. The name is a fitting one, considering his mother sending him to Polson as a child was a last resort for his health.

“I’m on my third life,” he said. “When I was a child I was a severe asthmatic. I was in the hospital on oxygen. I was dying from asthma.”

Duford was born in Milwaukee, Wis., and was sent to Polson by his mother in the hopes that the fresh country air would allow him to breathe.

His aunt and uncle ran the Hut Cafe on Main Street where Duford began to work after school.

For Duford, 80, the retirement is a bittersweet one. However, he says he is lucky to still be in business all these years later.

His daughter, Tali Duford-Barron, will take over the store, continuing the legacy of the family operating on the street. Until Jan. 31, shoppers will get 50 percent off all regular-priced clothing, 75 percent off all sale-priced clothing and 20 percent off Pendleton coats and vests.

After arriving in Montana, only one scary incident kept Duford from good health.

He awoke wheezing in the middle of the night and his family ran him to the Hutchins brothers, who owned the theater. One of them suffered from asthma as well and his uncle had to borrow some medication until his nephew could get his own.

“I had to use it all my school career,” Duford said. “But I haven’t had to use it in 20 years.”

The transition from Wisconsin to Montana was rough, to say the least. He still owns a postcard he wrote to his mother when he first arrived in Polson begging her to let him come home. It was not the postcard of a happy child.

“I want to come home, because I miss being away from home and I might even fail if I stay here all year because it’s so hard,” Duford wrote. “Please let me come home. Send the money for the train. Aunt Olive’s been nice to me but I want to come home. Tell me right away and say yes.”

Duford eventually learned to love his new home. Now he is a pillar of the community on Main Street.

Jim Manley, Lake County’s newly appointed district judge and Duford’s longtime friend, isn’t sure how Polson will look in a month.

“You just can’t imagine Polson without him,” he said. “Every small town in America has got guys like him. We’ve got too few of those guys left.”

Duford is known for his uncanny memory.

People come from all over the country and tell him their parents or grandparents or great-grand uncle lived in Polson. He remembers not just where they lived, but what they did for a living, what they enjoyed to do and — chances are — what size clothing they wore.

“He knows everything about everybody,” Duford-Barron said. “He could tell them the entire history of their families.”

Despite his asthma as a child, Duford became a star athlete for Polson High School, captaining his basketball team and playing baseball for the Pirates. He played one year as shortstop and second baseman for the University of Montana baseball team.

His love of baseball is well known in the community and the only vacations he takes are to go watch Major League spring training in Arizona.

“I’ve followed baseball since I was a little kid,” he said. “I was sick in bed and listening to the Chicago Cubs in the World Series in 1945.”

Duford plans to travel to watch the Cactus League again this year, assuming it doesn’t get in the way of his granddaughter’s college softball schedule. He has become such a fixture at Polson home games that the fact he might miss some is downright unusual.

“I’ve known him for 40 years and I have nine grandchildren who played sports,” Manley said. “I’ve never been to a Polson sporting event where he didn’t show up.”

After a year of college and a summer putting in telephone poles on Finley Point, he took one of his few breaks in that 68-year span on Main Street to work for The Desert Inn’s golf course in Las Vegas.

Duford left Nevada for Polson to get married shortly after that in 1953. The drive back was a memorable one.

“I got off work at 4 p.m. and stopped in Provo, Utah, at about 10 p.m. to get coffee because I was getting sleepy,” he said. “I was around Preston, Idaho, when I heard the sound of gravel and I don’t remember anything else.”

“I had gone over a cliff and a passing trucker stopped because he saw my headlights pointing up. I was unconscious for nearly two days with a severe concussion.”

He recovered in Polson before getting a job as a butcher at a grocery store on Main Street. He and a friend bought the store in 1956.

With the help of Polson banker Hib Hansen, Duford transitioned from a butcher to a tailor, going to Spokane’s Davenport Hotel to learn the business. He then purchased Shennaman’s clothing shop in 1969.

With a series of partners, the normally shy Duford ran Shennaman’s until 1991. His partner, Dick Wollin, retired that year and the storefront remained empty.

“Tali suggested why don’t we start it up together,” he said.

His daughter now owns 90 percent of the store, soon to be 100 percent by February.

“I’m just a 10 percenter,” Duford laughs.

The help he got from generous financial backers in his life was ample and he lists of dozens of names in quick succession. He returned the favor with his enormous work ethic.

“We’d have to physically push him out the door to go get coffee or something,” said Blanche Rohrenbach, an employee of Duford’s for 25 years. “I met him from church. He was always fair to everybody and he knew everybody’s sizes — even the summer people.”

He thanks the people of Polson, the tourists who come into his shop and the tribes for keeping him in business all these years. His legacy is continued by six children who are each a success in his or her own right. From Tali, who will run First Resort, to Patti Kugler, Lake County treasurer, to Dave Duford, Dana Duford, Cherie Gerlach, and Val Broyles (all business owners), his children were all instilled with a drive to work hard.

“I’m just fortunate to have the family I do,” Duford said, acknowledging his wife, Lou.

And although he prefers to stay behind the scenes, after nearly seven decades working on Polson’s Main Street, one has to believe it will feel a little emptier without him.

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.