Roberta Anne Caglioti

Roberta Anne Caglioti, who spent many summers in East Hampton while her husband, Victor Caglioti, worked as a visiting artist at Southampton College, died on Jan. 19 in Westhampton Beach after a struggle for decades with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 80.

In earlier years, Mrs. Caglioti was a valuable partner in her husband’s work, helping to solve problems of stretchers and canvasses and later assisting in the documentation of his work. They lived a bohemian life, with Mrs. Caglioti routinely putting a pot of pasta on the stove at 2 or 3 in the morning.

She loved gardening and cooking and excelled at a variety of different cuisines. Music was also a longtime passion, with her and her sister, Helen, singing at numerous functions in western New York, including in a choir that sang Handel’s “Messiah” at Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo.

In addition to the love of her family, she was known as a “neighborhood mother,” with people of all ages drawn to her, whether for comfort or food. “Teenagers sought her for perspective and stability. Newlyweds absorbed her advice and wisdom,” her husband said. Even “a cranky old Norwegian man,” who walked their neighborhood in Minneapolis, would tell everyone how “amazing that Roberta is — she can do anything.”

Mrs. Caglioti was born on June 2, 1934, in South Buffalo to Howard Bieber and the former Victoria Armstrong. She grew up there and went on to college in upstate New York, but had to leave after two years to seek employment.

Her husband said she excelled in a variety of different positions. A woman of many talents, she was in charge of research at one of Wall Street’s oldest law firms and instructed employees at an aerospace engineering firm in emerging electronics of the 1950s. She worked at an upstate New York carnival in springs and summers, and later was a receptionist and sometime-chef at an upscale Chinese restaurant in Minneapolis.

In 1958, she married Victor Caglioti, a painter, in Mineola. They raised their three children first in Lawrence and later in Minneapolis.

Mrs. Caglioti began showing early signs of Alzheimer’s between 1980 and 1985. Her husband took care of her, reducing his teaching responsibilities and eventually quitting his job in 1996. The couple subsequently returned to Hampton Bays to live near two of their children. In 1998, Mrs. Caglioti was placed in a nursing home in Westhampton Beach. For the past 17 years, her husband has visited twice each day.

In addition to Mr. Caglioti, she is survived by their three children, Angela Caglioti-Lawson of Seattle, Wash., Carla Caglioti of Hampton Bays, and Antonio Caglioti of Southampton. She also leaves three siblings, Ruth Buchanan of Houston, Helen Zielinski of Java Center, N.Y., and Fredrick Bieber of Little Valley, N.Y., and three grandchildren. Another sister, Jody Lund, died before her.