At 135 years old, Moss Service Funeral Home is only a few years younger than the City of Cullman.

Moss Service was founded in 1882 by C.D. Scheuing, who was invited to the area from Germany by Col. John Cullmann. In 1936, the business was sold to Grady Moss, who later changed the name to Moss Service.

Today, Moss Service is a member of the Dignity Network, which encompasses more than 2,000 funeral homes across the United States and Canada.

Moss Service has shown its longevity in Cullman, and many of its employees have done so as well. To honor the employees who have worked there the longest, Moss Service Manager Mike Pepple presented a few of them with awards at a dinner Tuesday.

“This staff has over 250 years of funeral experience,” he said. “That predates Cullman and almost predates America.”

That experience includes funeral director and former Cullman County Coroner Gary Murphree, who has worked at Moss Service for 46 years.

Murphree said he originally planned to work at Moss Service for a short time, and put in an application to be a Cullman police officer. When the police department finally called him back about his application, his co-workers at Moss Service convinced him to stay there.

Other jobs can bring in a bigger paycheck, but no amount of money can compare to helping a family get through a terrible time, he said.

“It’s very satisfying when you help a family through some of the worst times of their lives and they tell you what a good job you did,” he said. “That’s the real payday.”

Another one of Moss Service’s longtime employees also planned to work there for a short time, but ended up staying much longer than anticipated.

“I was just going to work there until I got out of college,” said funeral director Keith Pattillo, who has worked at Moss Service for 50 years.

He said he planned to work at the funeral home for just a short time, but the other employees at Moss Service told him that anyone who gets in the funeral business is there for life.

Pattillo has proven them right so far, and said he didn’t think he would like working at the funeral home at first, but he continues to work there to help people during their most vulnerable moments.

Pattillo also worked as a teacher and principal at Fairview High School, and said he wasn’t able to work as much at the funeral home during that time, but he never did leave.

“It’s a great place to work,” he said.

Many of Moss Service’s employees have decades of experience, but some of them are just getting started in the funeral business.

Lacie Nail has worked for a little more than a year as an apprentice funeral director and embalmer, and said her more experienced coworkers have been a big help during her short time at Moss Service.

“They’ve all taken me in,” she said.

Nail said she plans to stay at Moss Service for as long as she can, and employees like Murphree and Pattillo provide a great example of how to be loyal to a business.

“These guys, when you hear their names, you think of Moss,” she said.