Laurie DeWitt/ The Gazette Al Broadhurst, 83, retires today after working at Potomac's Strosniders Hardware store for 10 years. He co-owned Community Paint & Hardware in Bethesda, a mom-and-pop shop, decades before it closed its doors in 1960.

Eighty-three-year-old Al Broadhurst of North Potomac can immediately identify a piece of metal as a Gerber faucet or a 12-inch lamp fitting. He can tell customers at Strosniders Hardware in Potomac, where he has worked for 10 years, what types of nuts and bolts are needed for just about any project.

Just name it -- "Big Al" knows about hardware, paint and gardening.

"I just think he's one of those walking encyclopedias," said Pete McCloskey, general manager of Potomac's Strosniders Hardware.

Broadhurst will retire today after working for a decade at Strosniders. Though he will no longer come to work, he will leave behind a legacy of what he's known all his life: hardware.

Years ago, Broadhurst owned the Community Paint & Hardware store at 7250 Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda. His older brothers had purchased the store, originally called Bradley Hardware, in 1929. It was later managed by five of the Broadhurst boys, who first sold farm equipment before the store evolved into a "city-type" shop after the development of the National Institutes of Health in 1930.

"We had a ball," Broadhurst said. "We [were] an old country store."

Broadhurst, the youngest of eight children who was born in a house on Lone Oak Drive off of Old Georgetown Road, first worked at the store after finishing his school day at Bethesda Elementary School. Despite his age, he would separate 267-pound bags of fertilizer into five-, 10-, and 25-pound bags. He also measured turpentine from 55-gallon drums into pint-sized bottles.

He attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School but dropped out before graduating.

In 1939, at the age of 19, he started working at the store full-time and was promoted to a job in which he delivered material.

Broadhurst later worked in the store's hardware section, selling nuts, bolts, screws and anything related to construction. What had once been a two-man operation grew to a business run by eight people by 1940.

He married a "little girl" from Damascus named Frances Brownings, then 18, in 1942 when he was 21 years old.

During World War II, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and spent more than four years in the Pacific Ocean aboard a cargo ship. He traveled to Saipan and the Philippine Islands to deliver gas tanks and once narrowly escaped a torpedo.

In 1949, he left the Navy. After three month's rest, Broadhurst returned to his family store and took charge of the hardware and paint departments.

The store was special, he said, recounting in vivid detail its long-gone V-top table with $3,000 worth of hardware filling the counter, 10-cent Coca-Cola machine and familiar hardwood floor.

McCloskey, who once lived in Chevy Chase, remembers visiting Broadhurst's store as a child with his father. He also recalled the old-fashioned flair of the store's hardwood floors, soda machines, wooden seed bins, and dust. Today, McCloskey keeps a small artist's rendering of Broadhurst's store in his office.

"It's ironic that the man now works for me," he said of Broadhurst. "I knew exactly who he was. Wow, you want to work for me?"

Community Paint & Hardware closed in 1960, after the county allowed high-rise buildings to be constructed around it. The change in the neighborhood resulted in an increase in county real estate taxes, most of which Broadhurst could not afford.

On the last day he worked at Community Paint & Hardware, Broadhurst shattered his leg while moving a safe down a flight of stairs -- the safe fell on top of him, trapping him against a wall.

Undeterred, he was back at hardware stores six months later, this time working part-time.

In 1994, he found the family-owned Strosniders Hardware store in Potomac. He was attracted to it because its employees gave the same customer service to its patrons that he once gave to his, Broadhurst said. He said he liked interacting with customers, which is what he will miss most about working.

"We had a saying that everyone helped people the way they'd like to be helped," he said. "So many stores don't give you that feeling."

McCloskey said it is humbling that Broadhurst kept coming back to work, despite his declining health. "From owning your own business to retiring to becoming a clerk is interesting," he said.

Although Broadhurst has slowed down, that didn't stop him from treating his customers well and sharing his knowledge about hardware, said Jim Koch of Bethesda, a fellow employee at Strosniders.

Recently, Broadhurst has worked three days a week from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. He said he now plans to take some time off. He lives in North Potomac with his wife.

"I think we're going to miss him," Koch said. "He's knowledgeable. He's a great guy to work with. You learn a lot from a person like that. It was nice knowing the gentleman."