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

By Sam Roberts @ NYTimes.com, May 12

With an 8th-grade education, she emigrated to Brooklyn, where she invested her savings in real estate, rented out apartments and ran two laundromats.

Edith Richemond’s moniker in her Brooklyn neighborhood was “Big,” not in the mocking way that portly people are sometimes called “Tiny” or tall ones “Shorty,” but because of the disproportionately large heart that was assumed to beat within her diminutive frame.

But the nickname alluded not just to her giving spirit. In her tightly knit Haitian immigrant enclave in East Flatbush, she was known as much for her gumption, having arrived in New York with little money or education but with a drive to succeed.

And that she did, ending up investing in real estate and owning two laundromats. To her niece Athalie LaPamuk, her aunt was “Big” because she was also “a big deal” in her neighborhood [....]