Christopher 'Farmer' Curvin; motorcyclist loved the road
Their chrome glistening in the sun, more than 300 motorcycles, mostly Harley-Davidsons, pulled out of the Hickey Grenier Funeral Home in Brockton yesterday. A Heritage Softail trike, especially designed for "final runs," pulled a small trailer carrying Christopher Kevin "Farmer" Curvin's casket.
Fellow members of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club said yesterday that they wanted Mr. Curvin, 52, who died of cancer on June 26, "to go out right," so they arranged for one last ride with friends and fellow bikers from as far as Florida and Chicago to escort his body to its final resting place.
The motorcade passed through three towns before reaching the grave site at Springbrook Cemetery in Mansfield. As is their custom, the Outlaws conducted the burial themselves, laying his casket, emblazoned with the club's skull and crossed-pistons logo, into the ground before shoveling dirt on top.
Mr. Curvin's leather boots, worn from thousands of road miles and scores of runs to Outlaws clubs across the country, were given to his son, Christopher Jr., 17, who helped his father operate the family pig farm. Mr. Curvin's wife of 20 years, Sandra, his daughter, Elizabeth Osorio, and his two stepdaughters, Amanda Ricci and Carrieann Rudolph, thanked all who came.
Born in Brookline, Mr. Curvin grew up mostly in Dedham before buying a farm in Mansfield, where he rose at 4 a.m. to feed his herd of several hundred pigs.
When Mr. Curvin wasn't tending his pigs, he was riding his motorcycle. For the past six years he was president of the Brockton chapter of the Outlaws, one of more than 80 local groups that make up the club's international network of chapters.
The Outlaws proudly call themselves "the one-percenters," a moniker they adopted in the 1960s to distinguish themselves from the other 99 percent of bikers who don't take "hard riding [and] hard partying" as seriously as they do, according to the club's website.
Mr. Curvin was a "24-hour-a-day, 7-days-per-week" one-percenter, said Marty Warren, the group's regional spokesman.
"My fondest memory of him? Well, he's never missed a party, I tell you. And I mean that in the most [respectful] way," he said. "Very, very rarely did he drink, but he never showed up empty-handed. You know what his thing was? Making sure everyone else had a good time. That was his good time."
A robust man with a long beard, Mr. Curvin could be a tough chapter president. Friends from the club said that if he didn't like something that a member was doing, "he'd tell you so."
But he was always fair, was loyal, and loved his family, they said.
"Farmer was a very respected Outlaw," said George Fiske III, owner of the funeral home and a longtime friend. "A good father, and a good husband. But above all, he was a true one-percenter." 