NATCHEZ — When Teresa Irving thinks about Steve McNair, she doesn’t think about all the touchdown passes he threw or the last-second comebacks he led. She remembers one thing more than any other — his smile.

Irving, who was a dormitory director at Alcorn State from 1990-2009, remembers McNair stopping by her office at the New Women’s Dormitory quite often to see his girlfriend Michelle, whom he later married.

“He would come by my office quite a bit,” Irving said. “He always had a smile on his face. I’ll always remember his sweet smile.”

And McNair’s smile is one of the fond memories Irving holds on to after learning about the circumstances surrounding McNair’s death last Saturday.

Police have now classified the death as a murder-suicide, by his girlfriend Sahel Kazemi.

“I was hurting real bad when I found out,” Irving said. “It ruined my Fourth of July. It was a real bad day for me. I got to know him pretty well when he was at Alcorn, and it felt like someone real close to me had passed away.”

Irving said she was even more stunned when she found out the nature of McNair’s death.

“It was real shocking the way that he died,” Irving said. “No one deserves to die like that. I first thought that someone had broken into the house and killed him, but when I heard it was a murder-suicide, I felt real bad about it.”

Even though McNair was having an affair with a woman 16 years his junior when he died, Irving chooses to remember McNair as a positive influence.

“I’m going to remember the good times about him,” Irving said as she looked back through old Alcorn State yearbooks with McNair’s picture gracing the pages. “He was a beautiful person and he had a heart.”

One of the cherished keepsakes that Irving has is a copy of September, 1994 Sports Illustrated magazine with McNair on the cover.

McNair signed the copy for Irving and brought it by her office one day.

“He came by one day and left it by my desk,” Irving said. “He was like real close family and had a real tie to Alcorn State.

Irving’s son, Johntrell Irving, has looked up to McNair since the quarterback’s Alcorn days, and can recite the great plays and moments of McNair’s career at the snap of a finger.

“When I was a kid playing football in the backyard, I always wanted to be quarterback, just like Steve McNair,” Johntrell said. “He was a role model to me. I followed him from the time he was at Alcorn State, to the Houston Oilers, Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens. I followed everything about him.”

Teresa Irving said that McNair would often talk to her about living up to expectations and disappointing people as Alcorn State’s quarterback.

“He told me about when you’re playing football, you couldn’t please everybody,” Irving said. “He said the only thing you could do was just do your best. I always tell my son that. He knew he was in the spotlight and knew he couldn’t please everybody.”

And nowhere was that more evident than in McNair’s death, which left many of his fans and supporters disappointed and saddened that their hero would be caught up in an affair.

“All of us are disappointed,” Irving said. “He always did talk about disappointments in life. He was the type of person that he really believed in trying to please everybody. It’s just sad the way his life ended.”