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

In recent years, Albert Petrocelli was known in Staten Island’s Huguenot section as that nice man with the rosary beads and the bountiful garden. He walked the local streets, rosary in hand, offering to say prayers for those who could use them: a neighbor, a crossing guard, anyone.

But Mr. Petrocelli, who died at 73 of the novel coronavirus on April 1, was more than a retiree with beads and time on his hands. He served in Vietnam. He served as a New York Fire Department battalion chief. He lost a son in the World Trade Center attacks.

Most of all, his wife, Ginger Petrocelli, said, “He was a good guy.”

Mr. Petrocelli was born on Feb. 21, 1947, to Peter Petrocelli, a postal worker, and Mary (Capece) Petrocelli, who ran the household. The family lived first on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and then in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where he attended William E. Grady High School and planned on becoming an electrician.

When he was still in high school, Albert met an Irish-American girl, Ginger Walsh, at a sweet shop in Bay Ridge, and they began to date. After high school, and with the Army about to send him overseas, they married in a hurry — on March 18, 1967, the day between the Irish-centric St. Patrick’s Day and the Italian-centric St. Joseph’s Day.