Bienvenida Altagracia Ochs passed away painlessly in her sleep with her husband at her side following a day filled with family, friends, meditation, and laughter. Born Bienvenida Gomez Garcia in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on July 22, 1932, she was a spry and beautiful 83 at the time of her death on October 4, 2015.

Bienvenida received her doctorate degree in pharmacy and chemistry from the Universidad Autonoma of Santo Domingo, the oldest university in the New World. She held the positions of Director of Hospital Pharmacy in the Dominican Republic and Research Technologist in Puerto Rico.

In 1972, while working as a technician in the laboratory of neurobiology in the University of Puerto Rico, she  met Alfred Lawrence (Larry) Ochs who preceded her as a postdoctoral research fellow. Larry was gobsmacked by Bienvenida’s beauty and wanted to say hello -- hola-- in Spanish, a language of which he  knew only a few words. In his awestruck stupor  he instead said ahora, which means “now.”  As it turned out, now became later. When her sisters asked if there were any interesting guys at the lab, Bienvenida reported that there were a couple who were not very interesting and one “gringo hippie who was beyond consideration.” That hippie turned out to be very persistent. As they began to date, Larry learned of Bienvenida’s strong love of classical music, a passion he also shared, further proving she was someone he would spend his life with.

A year after they were married, the Ochs’ moved to San Francisco, California where they lived for five years and had their daughters. Paz Laura was born in 1973 and Sarah Emely in 1975. The family moved to Richmond, Virginia in late 1978, making Church Hill their home.

Bienvenida began her  art conservation career by serving in an apprenticeship with Ann Ring, Larry’s mother and a noted painter and conservator in Orlando, Florida. She studied art history and art technology at VCU and at the Virginia Museum of Art, studied gilding with William Adair in Washington, DC, and took courses in the History and Technology of Picture Frames and Conservation of Picture Frames with Jonathan Thornton at the Intermuseum Conservation Laboratory at Oberlin University in Ohio. Bienvenida began her private conservation practice in Richmond in 1988. She was conservator for the Walter Russell Museum of the University of Science and Philosophy at Swannanoa, Virginia. She had membership in the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, the Virginia Conservation Association,  and the Asociación Para la Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural de las Americas.

Among Bienvenida’s great passions were social justice, gardening, classical music, dancing, and most certainly, her husband and daughters. However, Bienvenida’s true transcendence was born of her quiet wisdom and concern for the feelings of others. As a friend recently told the Ochs family, her counsel did him more good than two psychiatrists. She will be truly loved, vividly remembered, and dearly missed by all who knew her.

Bienvenida was predeceased by mother, Fermina Garcia, and brother, Francisco Garcia. She has a brother, César Garcia, two sisters, Hilda Mercedes Gomez Garcia and Elsa Nidia Gomez Garcia, and a large and loving family extended between the Dominican Republic and United States.