There are so many stories and memories I have of Russ ... from the first time my son brought him home from high school with him all the way up to the last time I saw him just 2 weeks ago.

  He quickly became another one of my "adopted" sons and I treated him like he was one of my boys.  If he did something good he got praise ... if he pissed me off, he knew it.  I didn't cut him any slack when he tried to play stupid on me and quickly reminded him that I KNEW he wasn't stupid.  We had our ups and our downs, but what family doesn't?

  But Russ was always there, always looking out for me, and always ready to step in if he thought someone was going to get rough or wanted to start a fight.  If someone gave me the creeps ... he made them go away ... one way or the other.  He loved to send the new people in our TRF camp to wake me up in the morning ... and always had them scared half to death when he told them to s-l-o-w-l-y approach my tent with a lit cigarette and an open Dr Pepper before they scratched on the door ... then, when they heard a sound, unzip the bottom of the door only and pass in the cigarette and DP.  I think he called it making an offering to the Momma Dragon.
  
  And I remember the night he got so trashed at TRF that people had to go get him from the participant's showers to bring him back to camp.  You could hear him at the top of the hill, two rows over and all the way down the hill to his tent ... "Shhhh!  That's Momma Cammie's tent!  She's sleeping!"   It was so hard not to start laughing at him.  And then ... the tent spit him out the next morning ... almost literally.  Good memories!

  He loved to torment my dogs with the laser light.  He would run them up and down the tile hallway of the house we lived at in Spring, until they were so exhausted they could hardly move.  He called Boy Dog "his good kickin' dog" ... and the dog just loved it when Russ played with him.  If we had to go out of town, Russ always stayed home and took care of Baby Girl and Boy for us. 

He was a good guy and a good friend.  He will definitely be missed. 

When I was working the Renaissance Festival through the SCA, I would often bring my young daughter with me. She was about 4 or 5 at the time. She suffered from reflux disease and had to have a special diet when it flared up. One night after it had rained all day I had managed to get my daughter to sleep (her reflux was causing hiccups and this would lead to vomiting) but I was freezing from being in wet clothing all day. 
Russell came and set in my tent to watch my daughter to make sure she would be okay while I went to take a shower to warm up. When I came back to my tent I sat at the door watching Russell slowly rub my daughter back to relieve pain the hiccups would cause. I sat there watching this man who always seemed to have the hard shell of a personailty do something so soft and gentle to make sure a child was taken care of. Russell later that night sat with me asking me every question he could about her condition, he wanted to make sure that if she was around him he knew what to look for and how to help her, even down to any side effects of her medicine. He always watched out for my daughter, I am so grateful that he was so kind to her.