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You can’t force someone into the funeral business. It takes a special kind of person to act as the shoulder to lean on, the facilitator and the mediator that the job requires. So even though he’s the fourth-generation Gormley to willingly enter the trade, Patrick “Rick” Gormley, 68, was surprised when his own son wanted in.

“I didn’t see it coming with Pat,” Rick says of Patrick Gormley Jr.’s change of interest midway through college. Pat majored in criminal justice at San Diego State but continued to help out around the funeral home on Capitol Avenue in Midtown, mowing the lawn and assisting with services. It was a letter from a grateful family that crystallized his path. “I went to my dad and said, ‘This is what I want to do,’” Pat recounts. “Initially I wanted to do something else, but I found the calling.” His two siblings chose different careers.

Now 35, Pat is vice president and fifth-generation co-owner of W.F. Gormley & Sons Funeral Chapel, founded in 1897 by William Francis Gormley. William was Sacramento’s coroner and sheriff and the nephew of the city’s first Catholic bishop. The business has had three locations: the first, at 9th and J, was an imposing stone structure that had a livery and stable for a horse-drawn hearse; the second was at 7th and H, a Victorian that the family lived in (as was customary) from 1900 until 1924; and the current building, with its classical columns and iconic old-timey sign, was constructed in 1924 with the family home next door.

Rick, co-owner and president, grew up watching his dad, William “Bill” Gormley, build and maintain relationships with local families, many of which still endure. “It’s rewarding to know that they remember, and they want to come back,” says Rick, who joined the business in 1972. He calls the work “extremely gratifying,” though difficult at times. “It’s the Golden Rule, to treat people the way you want to be treated. They’re dealing with a death,” he says. “They’re entrusting that person into our care, for us to close their life how they want.”

Emphasis on “they.” Though W.F. Gormley & Sons is anchored by traditional values of dignity and compassion, they’re not stuffy. The business caters to all religions and beliefs, evolving to meet the needs of a clientele who increasingly request eco-friendly “green burials” and newer technologies like water cremation.

“As my dad used to tell me, knowledge isn’t knowing everything, but knowledge is knowing where to find the answer,” Rick says. “I’m still learning.” After 50-plus years in the business, clients still make requests he’s never encountered before. 

And the Gormleys will go the extra mile to honor those wishes. Father and son have spent countless hours transporting the dead up and down the state of California and have arranged air transport across borders. Precious cargo has included the remains of Catholic Bishop Alphonse Gallegos, which they were tasked with exhuming, transporting and reinterring in Sacramento as part of his cause towards sainthood in 2010, earning the staff a papal blessing. 

As Sacramento’s oldest independent, licensed funeral home, W.F. Gormley & Sons has earned many distinctions including U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2022 Family-owned Small Business of the Year in Sacramento and is one of the 2024 Burnett Awardees for the Sacramento History Alliance. In its 127 years, the business has seen the advent of the motorized hearse, a shift from open-casket funerals to cremations and “celebrations of life,” and two global pandemics. 

Pat, who has two small children of his own, believes that the strength of a family business is in its institutional knowledge, maintained through continuity. “You’re dealing with somebody whose name is part of the company, so there’s a true tie from the family,” he says.

“They’re trying to represent not only themselves but the prior generation that laid the groundwork for the current generation, and do them justice.”   

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