Sidney Hirsh put shoes on the feet of an untold number of Tucsonans, and wore down more than a few pairs of his own with epic hikes and marathons around the world.

The longtime owner of Hirsh’s Shoes on Broadway near Country Club Road died Dec. 9. He was 90.

Hirsh was born on Aug. 22, 1930, in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. His family moved to Tucson for health reasons in 1944.

After graduating from Tucson High School, Hirsh attended the University of Washington in Seattle, where he studied history and met and married his wife, Marsha.

They moved back to Tucson with their newborn daughter, Leslie, in 1954, after Hirsh got out of the Army. He soon joined his mother, Rose, at the children’s shoe store she had opened at 2934 E. Broadway a few months earlier.

So began an up-and-down, 62-year career in the shoe business.

Hirsh and his brother-in-law, Bud Rosenbluth, eventually took over the store, then branched out as the city grew up around them.

There were as many as five Hirsh’s Shoes locations in Tucson at one time, but the business gradually shrank back to a single specialty shop at the original location — just Sid, his dedicated staff and his loyal customers.

Hirsh finally closed the shop for good and stopped selling shoes in 2016 at the age of 85.

“It was a great store. I was just lucky to have such great people,” Hirsh told the Star earlier this year. “You can’t fight the clock.”

A look at Tucson in the early days from the air or from the tallest building. Produced by Rick Wiley / Arizona Daily Star

Demion Clinco, CEO of the nonprofit Tucson Historic Preservation Association, said Hirsh’s was one of the Old Pueblo’s last truly local shoe stores with multigenerational ownership, and many longtime residents have stories about shopping there.

Clinco said his first visit came when he was around 11 years old and his younger sister needed a pair of ballet shoes.

Years later, when Hirsh decided it was time to retire, Clinco’s foundation would buy the shop to keep it from being altered or torn down. It still bears the Hirsh name above its storefront.

Hirsh’s Shoes was added to the National Register of Historic Places earlier this year, along with about 160 other classic mid-20th-century buildings along a two mile stretch of East Broadway known as the Sunshine Mile.

Clinco said the designation should help preserve a prime example of America’s post-World War II optimism, as embodied by both the building and the businessman who occupied it.

“Sid was a true Tucsonan through and through,” Clinco said.

Hirsh was known for more than shoes, of course.

A health scare in the 1960s transformed him from a chain smoker to an avid hiker, runner and cyclist with a taste for the extreme.

According to his obituary notice, he led backpacking trips for the Sierra Club and completed numerous marathons.

Then he met a native Tarahumara man at Mexico’s Copper Canyon who introduced him to something truly crazy: a pastime known as speed hiking.

Sometime after that, Hirsh hiked the Grand Canyon from rim to rim and back again without stopping — a one-day journey totaling some 52 miles with more than 20,000 feet of ascent and descent.

Then he did it at least five more times, as the feat turned into an annual contest, albeit one not strictly endorsed by the National Park Service. As a 1992 article in Arizona Highways explained, anyone who could finish the down and up and down and up in less than 24 hours earned a T-shirt.

Hirsh was also a longtime member of Temple Emanu-El, the Lions Club, Tucson Rotary, the Arizona Historical Society, the Southern Arizona Hiking Club and the Sierra Club.

He generously supported the arts with both his money and his attention. He and Marsha were regulars at concerts, symphonies, plays and operas, Hirsh’s personal favorite.

His was “a real life well-lived,” Clinco said. “It’s a real loss. He left a lasting legacy.”

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Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@tucson.com or 520-573 4283. On Twitter: @RefriedBrean