NATCHEZ — Suzi Russ is quick to point out that she has lived a wonderful life.

She has found passions and raised a loving family. She is eager to talk extensively and freely about both.

“I’ve got seven thousand stories to tell,” she said. “Which one do you want to hear first?”

But when The Dart landed on St. Charles Avenue in Natchez on Father’s Day, she was feeling a mix of happiness and sadness: Happiness at the wonderful memories she shared with her own father, Emmett “Honey” Kergosien; and sadness at the thought of him being gone.

“He was an interesting man and a great father,” Russ said.

Growing up in Bogalusa, La., Russ’s father, acted as both mother and father. Her mother, Ruby Kergosien, had multiple sclerosis.

“I never once saw her walk,” Russ said. “Sometimes I cry when I think about my dad because he cared for her for 25 years. It must have been a struggle. He didn’t want to leave her alone. His whole life was us (Russ and her sister, Andrée), my mom and being a furniture salesman.”

But amidst the struggle of having a mother that was disabled, they found immense love.

And it was that love that opened up Russ’s eyes to two of her three passions in life, cooking and taking care of people. Her third passion is dancing. Russ was a dance teacher at South Natchez High School and later at Natchez High School for 29 years.

From an early age, Russ helped her father with taking take of her mother.

“I shaved her legs, put her makeup on and helped her whenever she needed it,” she said. “It was all a part of growing up. It was normal.”

The experience she gained when helping her mother came into practice later in her life with her husband’s father, James Russ, contracted cancer and needed care, and again with her husband Robert “Bobby” Russ, when he was living with Alzheimer’s disease for seven years before his death in 2011.

“Taking care of Bobby was the hardest job I have ever had to do,” she said. “I learned it all from watching my father.”