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HISTORY OF A.C. MOYER COMPANY

Who We Are

A history of the eye cap: Sometime in the early 1940's two gentlemen, who traveled the Southern Pacific railroad together, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Charles Barry, struck up a conversation with a mortician about his business. They learned there was a specific need for a device that would keep a person's eyes closed and shaped after death. These two gentlemen decided to take on the challenge of meeting this need and design the first eye cap (also referred to as an eye former).

A few years after designing the eye cap, the two split the company and each went their own ways. Morgan went to the north, in the San Francisco bay area, and Charles Barry to the south, in the southern California area. 

Barry continued making the eye cap, as did Morgan, and both were determined to market their new product to mortuaries.

Barry was in need of some help making the eye caps. He, being a bachelor and having no family of his own, asked a wife of his friend to assist him with the task. This woman was Anna Catherine Moyer, the mother of six children, and wife of Edwin Moyer, Barry's friend. Anna had very little time to help Barry, but really needed money with such a big family.

In the beginning, it was a very tedious process to make the eye caps. It involved heating and molding strips of plastic to the proper shape, dipping the strips in glue, putting perforations in the molded shapes, and finally cutting them out one by one. This was done with hand made tools and scissors. There was even special requests for padding on the eye caps. So they devised a way of attaching a thin layer of felt to the strips of plastic for the proper effect. There seemed to be a desire for an eye cap with natural skin toned color as well. That is how the flesh colored plastic came into use. Barry was not producing a lot of eye caps in those early days, as it was still new to embalmer, and a very difficult process to make them. 

In 1947 Mr. Barry passed away. He left his young business to his faithful friend, Anna Moyer. Anna accepted the challenge of continuing to make the eye caps. She struggled making them on her own, so she enlisted the help of other family members. Her children were mostly grown now, beginning families of their own, yet some still close enough to help. Zelda, Anna's only daughter, became her most faithful helper. She learned every aspect of making eye caps as Anna had from Barry. For more than ten years Anna kept making and selling eye caps until her untimely death in 1957. Anna's dying request was that Zelda continue the business.

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Though she had four children of her own, Zelda would work while the children were away at school. Luckily, she had married a trained machinist and tool and die maker. That man was Dale McCrummen. Though Dale had a full time job of his own, after work and on weekends, he would help improve the machines and tools. The tools he created helped Zelda make a more uniform eye cap with less effort.

Dale then heard of a new method of shaping plastic called vacuum forming. He decided to look into this, as the method Zelda was using was very time consuming and tedious. They purchased the vacuum former and Dale created special dies to use in the process. Dale's skills helped make Zelda's work much easier and more productive. The production process became a real family effort.

Although still very modest, the family business passed down from each generation, began to grow. The business was then named A.C. Moyer Company, after Zelda's mother Anna Cathrine Moyer. Zelda's middle child, Sally, took an interest in the business, she had always wanted to help pack the eye caps into their boxes to be shipped. She felt it was a privilege to do the work her parents did. Sally helped her mother with the business throughout her whole life.

When Zelda got extremely ill, Dale asked his daughter Sally to come help run the business. Sally relocated with her daughter to be closer to her parents, and eventually learned every aspect of running the business.

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In 1989 Sally's father passed away. Dale had expressed his concern that Zelda would not be able to keep the business running and all the tools up to date on her own. Zelda soon realized she wanted to retire. Sally Moyer took over the business, and has ran it to this day. She now also employs the help of her own daughter Carrie, who joined the business in 2019. 

A.C. Moyer Company has been truly a family owned an operated business and will continue to be that way for many years to come. All of our customers have been with us for many years and we appreciate each of their loyalty as we continue to grow and develop the all products we offer.