This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

Norman Gulamerian was a successful businessman and an artist, but his life was shaped by his love for an exuberant young widow and her five children.

He met Mary Alexander briefly after a funeral in St. Louis in 1963. An optimistic, can-do Julie Andrews type — she even sang — Mrs. Alexander was raising her children (Christopher, Rebecca, Seth, Eve and Jennifer) on her own after her husband had died of a heart attack.

When Mr. Gulamerian, who lived in New York, met her again two years later, he was taken by the whole package — the lively children tumbling over one another not to mention Mrs. Alexander’s dark beauty, her joyous light brown eyes and the way she threw her head back when she laughed.