Author: Blair Frodelius

David Moyer would have been the first to admit that he was an incurable ham. He loved to perform. It did not matter whether it was with the little theater in Syracuse, Off Off Broadway, summer stock, considerable film extra work or amateur productions around the country. He greatly enjoyed acting and giving public lectures. He was a natural teacher, but he early chose the stage over the schoolroom. Of course he never could quit his mundane day job until he was forced to retire. What did he consider the worst thing about acting? Working with puppets and waiting in vain for them “to feed me my line.” He really flourished in retirement when he could fully explore his many interests. Two of his top passions were Egypt and Oz. He was not a trained professional Egyptologist, but he knew as much about the Middle Kingdom as any of them. He was largely self-taught and constantly learning. He kept a vast reference library on Ancient Egypt that included a wealth of color photographs he took while conducting tours of Egypt. He drew on them for the college course he taught in his later years. Documentarians often turned to him for visual material for their TV programs. He was especially proud of his brilliant monthly column for “Kemit,” the scholarly magazine devoted to Ancient Egypt. On one of his many trips to Egypt, he made a mistake one should never do. While climbing one of the pyramids, he foolishly looked down and he froze. He just sat down out of fear. With considerable difficulty, the other guides were able to get him to climb back down. David was a very active member of The International Wizard of Oz Club, Inc and amassed an impressive Oz collection. He loved the Oz Books from the time he was a little boy as well as the famous movie. A great dog lover, he was also an avid fan of the dog stories by Albert Payson Terhune. At one time he collected all sorts of Gone With The Wind memorabilia. He not merely attended but frequently contributed in a variety of ways to the various Oz conventions sponsored by the club and often wrote them up. He was deeply touched when he received The L. Frank Baum Memorial Award. He was particularly fond of the Chittenango Oz meetings because attending them gave him the opportunity not only to visit dear friends like Clara Houck and Cynthia Baum Tassini but also to check up on his hometown Phoenix. David was also a skillful amateur genealogist. We went on several primary research trips in pursuit of local public records throughout New York State. I looked up the Baums while Dave looked up his own family. Any tidbit about the Moyers was of vital importance to him. When David combined Oz and Egypt, it was truly magical. He gave one of the finest presentations on L. Frank Baum I have ever seen. Taking the actual photographs Baum took on the trip he and his wife Maud took to Egypt in 1906, David visually reconstructed that tour by juxtaposing the pictures great-grandson Bob Baum provided him with ones David himself took at the very same spots today. He continued to hone the presentation over the years until it became a highly polished sophisticated and entertaining talk. It is a shame it was never recorded. David’s Holy Grail was the 1914 silent movie “The Last Egyptian” that the Oz Film Manufactuting Company made based on Baum’s obscure anonymous novel. When I learned that the only surviving copy was housed at the Museum of Modern Art, I arranged a private screening for the two of us. It was missing the first and final reels and was in an advanced state of decomposition, but there was enough left to give a good idea of the complete motion picture. David was in Heaven; and he pointed out things I would never have noticed if not for him. Charles Silver the curator kindly ran it twice for us so we could really study it. Everyone who met David Moyer knew what a gentleman he was. He was kind, considerate, generous and also volunteered whenever someone needed help. I benefited immeasurably from little kindnesses over the years from his shooting slides for my lectures to traveling with him to various Oz Conventions all over the United States. I remember well the time we brought as a surprise actress Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West in the 1939 picture, to one of the Munchkin Conventions. Dave and Maggie had the best time talking about the theater and the movies on the train to and from Philadelphia. It will be hard to attend them now without him. Goodbye, dear friend.