John Drury remembered the old days, before society began to value historic neon signs.
Drury is president and CEO of Pacific Neon, which recently spent several weeks restoring W.F. Gormley & Sons’ neon sign, ahead of the funeral home’s move to Land Park from midtown. On Thursday morning, installers for Drury’s company began installing the sign at its new location at 2691 Riverside Blvd.
“I’ve been doing this almost 47 years,” said Drury, as his installers worked carefully to get the Gormley sign in place. “When I started out, we’d take down some old classics. If I had them now – gas station signs like the old Ridgefield Eagles, all the old classic neon and porcelain signs. I can’t tell you how many beautiful signs we dispatched.”
Work by Drury’s company, representatives of W.F. Gormley and others helped ensure that an iconic sign for Sacramento will live on.
A long time coming
W.F. Gormley & Sons, which is a fifth-generation family business dating to the late 19th century, announced in March that it would be moving to Land Park. Plans for the move date to July 2025, when a representative for Pappas Investments approached the Gormley family about selling their old location at 2015 Capitol Ave.
“The sign was always going to go wherever we went,” said Patrick Gormley, who is the fourth generation of his family to work in the business, during the installation Thursday morning. His son, his daughter and their mother were also on hand.
“It’s a part of our history,” Gormley said. “It’s like over inside the new funeral home now. We’ve incorporated our pews from our old funeral home, which are in great shape, stained glass windows. So we did incorporate some of the old into the new. But the sign was always at the forefront.”
Getting the sign to its new location was no easy feat.
Pacific Neon removed the sign from the old location on Aug. 18, bringing it back to its shop at 2939 Academy Way for touch-ups.
The installation wasn’t simple. Pacific Neon had installer James Guthrey in a crane about 10 feet in the air and had the sign attached to a saddle and hanging over the poles. Installer Hank Uroff was at ground level, operating the crane.
Hank Uroff guides the restored W.F. Gormley Funeral Chapel sign as it is installed by the Pacific Neon Company at its new location on Riverside Boulevard in Sacramento on Thursday. HECTOR AMEZCUA hamezcua@sacbee.com First service at Land Park location
Patrick Gormley Jr. said that his company had its first service Wednesday at the new location, for a middle-aged Land Park resident, attracting more than 30 people.
W.F. Gormley & Sons held its final service at its old location within the past two weeks. It plans an open house at the new location on Oct. 25 from noon to 3 p.m.
Gormley Jr. said he was both sad and excited to leave the old location.
“We’re closing that chapter, which my family has been there for a long time,” he said. “But the fact that we’re here is kind of the next chapter for my dad and I to continue to serve the community.”
The Sacramento Preservation Commission is slated next Wednesday to consider putting the Gormley sign on the local historic register, city Preservation Director Sean de Courcy said Thursday.
Asked why it was worth going to some trouble for a sign, Drury said it was about history.
“To have operations like this, 129 years old, I mean, still in the same family, five generations, pretty unique, not too many of those running around,” he said.
Same sort of thing went for the sign.
“It’s fun to retain the heritage and the history of town and to see these type of displays still in place,” Drury said. “Because they don’t do it like that anymore. That’s old school.”
This story was originally published October 15, 2026 at 1:30 PM.
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Graham Womack is a general assignment reporter for The Sacramento Bee. Prior to joining The Bee full-time in September 2025, he freelanced for the publication for several years. His work has won several California Journalism Awards and spurred state legislation.