Beth Curry

MANHATTAN, N.Y. — Beth Rivers Curry died peacefully at home in Manhattan Monday, surrounded by her family.

Raised on a farm in Chesterfield, the first of five children, she grew up feeding chickens and exploring the hills nearby. She attended Queens College in Charlotte, graduating as student body president and valedictorian. Beth married, raised her family and then, when her children were older, returned to Queens for business school.

Soon after, she co-founded Eagle Capital Management in New York, now a $25 billion investment firm, which manages money for families, universities, foundations and pension funds.

Even as she helped build a large investment firm and sat on the boards of many institutions, Beth remained true to her small-town values.

Eschewing the combative, confrontational style of high finance, she brought a purposeful, friendly, common-sense skepticism to Wall Street. Her disarming Southern accent and small stature masked a probing, persistent, analytic intelligence.

She had a wide, warm and genuine curiosity about the lives of everyone she met from CEOs to cabdrivers to strangers' children — and took as much pleasure stumbling upon a strange mushroom or beautiful moss growing in the woods as discovering new investment opportunities.

Beth sometimes regretted not being a scientist and later in life took great pleasure in spending time with researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and Rockefeller University, on whose boards she served.

She was grateful to Queens for helping her make the transition from homemaker to financial executive; she served as a trustee of the college, starting in 1986, and received its Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award in 2008.

In 1995 she joined the board of the Hyde and Watson Foundation, providing funding to hundreds of arts, education, health care and social service organizations. Church community has always been an important part of Beth's life, and most recently she was a trustee at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. Before entering the workforce, she was a devoted community volunteer who helped build the Summit Childcare Center, New Jersey's first modern infant care and pre-K facility for working mothers.

Above all, Beth was a great storyteller and wit, inherited from her father and cultivated in a large Southern farm family. She could transfix friends and family by turning some small, forgettable moment into an unforgettable yarn.

She is survived by her husband of 52 years, Ravenel Boykin Curry III, who was also her business partner for 27 years; her three children, Ravenel Boykin Curry IV, Caroline Rivers Curry (Rob Davis), and Marshall Anderson Curry (Elizabeth Martin); her seven grandchildren, Ravenel, Zinnia, Wick, Jackson, Quinton, Jane and Rivers; and her siblings, Jay Rivers (Cathryn), Rebecca Sullivan (Burr) and Melinda Ford (Tommy). She was predeceased by her sister, Carolyn Query.

A memorial service was held at 11:15 a.m., Monday, Nov 23, at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. An informal gathering to remember Beth will take place at the Rivers family cemetery on East Jackson Road in Chesterfield at 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 27. Lunch outside immediately following at Riverwood Farm at 759 Teals Mill Road.

In lieu of flowers, gifts can be made to: Weill Cornell Medicine; The Rockefeller University; or Queens University of Charlotte.

Paid obituary

The Cheraw Chronicle

Thursday, Nov. 26, 2015