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Every day — except Sundays — 95-year-old Samuel Myers wakes up at 5 a.m., prays, eats his breakfast and heads to work, not returning to his Silver Spring home on most days until after 6 p.m. For more than 60 years, Myers has run his own dry-cleaning and formal-wear business, and he credits his longevity to one simple secret.

"I just like clean clothes," Myers says with a laugh last Thursday from Jim Dandy Cleaners, the shop he has owned on Bonifant Street in Silver Spring for 38 years.

Silver Spring has changed drastically in the 38 years since Myers arrived at the ripe age of 57, but the Jim Dandy name, which he chose because he thought it sounded snappier than Samuel Myers, has become a sort of local institution. His shop is more than just a place to find wedding gowns and tuxedoes, it's one of the few remaining "neighborhood shops" in a town overcome by chain stores.

"If you've got a problem, lost your job or down on your luck or having a bad day, he's there," said Councilwoman Valerie Ervin (D-Dist. 5) of Silver Spring. "I have been in his shop when three different people stopped by and needed to talk to him for a few minutes in private."

Ervin, who says Myers is "just like everybody's grandfather," nominated him for this year's Neal Potter Path of Achievement Awards, given to outstanding county residents 60 years or older and named after Potter, the late County Executive. The awards ceremony is Thursday night at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda.

Myers will receive the award for "workplace contribution," an honor that expands beyond just his longevity. He's a reverend and former member of the board of directors for Kiwanis International, an organization that develops youth leaders. He helped organize the garment workers labor movement in the 1940s after starting his first dry-cleaning shop in Washington, D.C., in 1946. He was a longtime member of the Greater Silver Spring Chamber of Commerce.

But perhaps most importantly to those who know him, Myers is wise in his years and not reluctant to share that wisdom. When holding court in his shop, Myers drifts from reminiscing on his childhood, jokes that are as old as he is and an infectious optimism manifested in the quirky proverbs he's developed over the years.

"I call the people that work for me ‘helpers,' not employees," said Myers. "I trust them better than family. You can holler at coworkers, but you can't holler at family."

While the amount of ‘helpers' Myers has had over the years has fluctuated, the business is now essentially a one-man operation. He handles all the fittings for wedding dresses and tuxedoes, takes the laundry to a subcontractor and sets up deliveries with various formal-wear providers.

With people dressing more casually to work, the demand for dry cleaning has plummeted over the years, Myers said, and it's nothing short of heartbreaking for a man who has dedicated 60 years to his craft.

"Can you imagine a nation without dry cleaning and how dirty and unkempt the world would be?" Myers wondered earnestly when asked why he took his job so seriously.

His dedication started in Conway, S.C., where as a young boy he worked in his father's barber shop, which had a dry-cleaning business in the back of the store. Myers wanted to be a doctor, but when the Great Depression hit and both of his parents died, he didn't have nearly enough money for medical school. He moved to D.C. to live with siblings.

In 1933, he married his first wife, a union that lasted 63 years until she died in 1996. After they married, they saved some money and bought a cottage in Washington, D.C., for $100. In 1946, Myers decided to start his own dry-cleaning business.

His name "spread like wild fire," with some female customers bringing in $200 to $300 of dry cleaning per week, he said. Despite the race-related turmoil engulfing the country at the time, Myers refused to believe things were any more difficult for a black business owner, even the only one in town.

"I'm above it," he said. "Everybody I met was nothing but honorable to me."

But in time he worked himself into exhaustion and eventually had to take a sabbatical from dry cleaning. He and his wife had five sons at the time, all of whom had worked at the store but were getting old enough for college and their own careers.

"Times were tough, but I've never had a tough day," Myers said, looking toward the sky and pointing up. "I never look down, I look up."

In 1971 he decided to open a new store with a new name, Jim Dandy. Myers felt a renewed passion toward the business, and the name has been recognizable with longtime Silver Spring residents ever since.

From time to time, Myers would get calls asking if the business is for sale, and he always said no. He says people have stopped calling, perhaps taking the hint that he isn't going anywhere.

"I learned from him to stay busy and stay active, it increases your longevity," said his 68-year-old son Walter Myers, who when he was younger took vacation days off from his own job whenever his father took a vacation so he could watch his father's store. Luckily for him, his father hasn't taken a vacation since 1988.

"I'm proud of the fact that he's still moving around and doing what he's doing."

And there are no signs of slowing down. Myers says he'd open another store before he even considered closing Jim Dandy Cleaners.

"I'm too young to even think about that," he said.

In addition to Samuel Myers receiving an award in the category of "workplace contribution," the following Montgomery County seniors will receive Neal Potter Path of Achievement awards Thursday at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda:

-Ralph Kuehner, 85, of Derwood will receive an award in the category of "advocacy." He played a key role in establishing Victory Housing Inc., the nonprofit development arm of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., which provides affordable housing to seniors.

-Robert Mabie, 83, of Olney and Dorothy Nelson, 83, of the Leisure World retirement community in Aspen Hill will receive awards in the category of "community service." Mabie has been integral in the county's Recycling Volunteer Program. Nelson has long volunteered with the county's Long-Term Care Ombudsman program and the Montgomery County Volunteer Center.

-Virginia Gilbert, 75, of Silver Spring will receive an award in the category "sports and fitness." Gilbert has brought the "Bone Builders" program to the county, which offers exercise to seniors to lessen the effects of osteoporosis.