FARGO (AP) - This city's last Ben Franklin store is closing, ending five decades that started with a five-and-dime.

After losing their lease, founder Doug Larsen and store owner Sue Johnson, his daughter, decided to close the business he launched May 15, 1956, in Fargo's Northport Shopping Center. A going-out-of-business sale was scheduled today.

Johnson, a former schoolteacher who came home from Kansas City, Mo., in 1979 to join the family business, said closing the store isn't easy.

"I used to sort hangers up in the attic," she said, recalling the time when she was 6 or 7 years old.

The decision also is difficult on employees.

"It's very hard," said Darlene Gronbeck, who started working for Larsen in 1976 at the Moorhead, Minn., Ben Franklin store. "Doug and Sue are the best people to work for."

Larsen missed opening Fargo-Moorhead's first Ben Franklin store by five months to Curtis Olson, who opened a Ben Franklin on Dec. 1, 1955, in Fargo's South Side Shopping Center.

Larsen bought that store and another in Moorhead from Olson in 1963, in partnership with his father, Roger, and brother Donald.

Doug Larsen, a 1953 University of North Dakota marketing graduate, opened the Fargo store that is now closing after a two-year stint in the Air Force.

"We were strictly a 5- and 10-cent store. We had everything that kids needed for school," he said.

"Back in the 1970s, we were like a little town out here," Larsen said. "The people that lived out here took a real ownership in this shopping center. We didn't have the competition of the big-box stores to draw people out of the north side."

During his 50-year tenure, Doug Larsen operated seven Ben Franklin stores, including three in Fargo, and Minnesota stores in Moorhead, Fergus Falls, Detroit Lakes and Wadena. Son Eric Larsen now owns the Ben Franklin in Fergus Falls, the only one to remain open.

Another son, Steve, previously owned the Detroit Lakes Ben Franklin store that closed three years ago.

"It's been really a wonderful run for my whole family," Doug Larsen said.