NATCHEZ — Former Fire Chief Herbert “Sonny” Moore’s family members and coworkers remember him as a great cook — except when he cooked snake.

“He’d caught a rattlesnake and cooked it,” Moore’s niece Lisa Leach laughed. “After people ate it, he told them what it was.”

Moore served as a fire fighter for 33 years, and he retired as fire chief for the City of Natchez in 1989. He died in his home Sunday at age 79 after an eight-month battle with cancer, his wife Betty Jo Moore, 74, said.

Adams County Emergency Management Director Stan Owens worked under Moore in the 1980s, and he said Moore was always cooking something different.

“He’d come to work and bring fried snake,” Owens said. “I’ll never forget when he brought tripe — cow guts — up there. I wouldn’t touch it.”

In 1973, Moore, along with two other fire fighters, was awarded the Carnegie Medal for saving a man’s life.

“Sonny enjoyed life, and he really enjoyed the fire department,” Owens said. “It was a major part of his life.”

Richard A. Moore, 48, said his father Sonny taught him the value of hard work.

“In those days, when there was a siren, all the fire fighters went to help,” he said. “It didn’t matter if you were at work or off.”

He remembered a time he went to a house fire with his father.

“You could see straight through the house,” he said. “He wrapped wet towels around his head and went in.

“He stepped on a nail and it went through his foot, so he came and got me to hold the board (the nail was on) while he pulled it out, then he went back in.”

In Moore’s 33 years of working at the fire department, he was only late to work twice, his son said.

“One time his alarm didn’t go off, and the other time he got in a wreck on his way there,” he said.

Sonny Moore’s brother, Buddy, said his older brother would help anyone; he didn’t care what the circumstances were.

“He did a lot of good things,” Buddy Moore, 72, said. “He didn’t get in fights. He was a good-hearted person.”

“But he was about the toughest and roughest rascal you ever met in your life,” a family member added.

Chuckling, Buddy Moore agreed.

“I thought the world of him,” he said.

Doctors first found cancer in Sonny Moore’s adrenal gland, and it continued to spread.

“He believed up until the end that he was going to get well,” Betty Jo Moore said.

She met her husband nearly 59 years ago at a restaurant when she was 16 and he was 21.

“I was dating him and some other guy, and the other guy left the table and Sonny asked me to dance, and we danced together.

“He said, ‘Will you be my girl?’ and I said yes. When we got back to the table, I told the other guy, ‘I’m going with Sonny now.’”

The song they first danced to was “Because of You.” It was played again at Sonny Moore’s funeral.

“He took care of me,” Betty Jo Moore said. “He was the love of my life.”