C.J. Matherne poses July 8 with his converted Harley-Davidson Road King, which hauls a hearse, outside St. Mary Nativity Church's mausoleum in Raceland. (AP Photo/ Emily Schwarze/The Houma Courier)
This is pretty cool. Via the Shreveport Times.
Offering a final ride behind a Harley
RACELAND — It's a hard time to start a business and a slow season for funerals. But a Raceland man has a fledgling funeral business, figuring he's not the only person who will want a final road trip behind a rumbling steel horse rather than the usual hearse
A funeral is not something you look forward to," but it's part of life, said C.J. Matherne, owner of Steel Heart Memorials.
"You want to make it special," said his wife, Lauren Matherne.
The business was her idea.
They first heard of motorcycle hearses in 2001, when a friend showed C.J. a photo of one. They remembered that picture when reworking their life insurance policies last year, Lauren said.
C.J., who bought his first street bike at age 18, owns two Harley-Davidson motorcycles and usually rides with friends every weekend.
"If something were to happen to him, that's what I would want for him," Lauren said. "(But) there's nothing like that anywhere around here, and it would have cost thousands of dollars to get it here."
C.J., a 51-year-old forklift mechanic, underwent two operations last year to repair wear and tear on his shoulders from more than three decades of mechanic and offshore work.
Driving a motorcycle hearse would be easier on his body and allow him to provide a service for other avid bikers. "I just thought he'd be perfect for it," Lauren said.
So they bought a third Harley-Davidson — a Road King converted into a three-wheel motorcycle, or trike, and a Victorian-styled hearse just big enough for a coffin.
They came from Tombstone Hearse Co. of Bedford, Pa., which began creating and selling such hearses in 2001.
Tombstone Hearse has affiliates in more than a dozen locations, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest. Steel Heart is the first on the Gulf Coast, the Mathernes said.
The company's other Southern sites include spots in Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina, according to the Tombstone Hearse Web site.
The Mathernes believe their motorcycle hearse is the only one of its kind in Louisiana, with the nearest similar service in Houston. ...............
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