Stephen Ian O'Bar Legat

A visitation will be held on March 5, 2025 from 11 to 1pm. A chapel service will begin at 1pm. Burial will follow at Oak Hill Cemetery.

Honorary pallbearers will be Etowah High School Class of 2015.

Ian was a lifelong resident of Etowah County. He lived most of it in the Curtiston community of Attalla. He was a 2015 graduate of Etowah High School, and a 2021 graduate of Gadsden State Community College, with 2 associate's degrees. Ian was employed at Food City Gadsden.

He and his younger brother Joey were the best of friends, and he was especially close to his grandfather, the late Steve Legat. He was also very close to his Uncle Wayne, who was a surrogate grandfather to him. Ian loved all his furry and scaly family members, but most especially his best buddy cat Marmalade.

Ian was kind, generous, helpful, and a mostly happy person. He struggled to fit in due to his autism, ADHD, OCD, and sensory integration disorder. He could seem a bit prickly or even angry when they were at their worst.

He loved life, and his main hobby was home improvement. After losing the family home to a fire in 2014, he had worked hard to get them into a new home and had just moved into one at the time of his death. He enjoyed playing the video games Minecraft and Space Engineers, as well as the board games Risk and Scrabble. Ian loved building Lego models and had hoped to build a Lego model of the Titanic. He also enjoyed hiking, rock climbing, exploring old cemeteries with his dad, and stargazing.

Ian appreciated comedy, especially Monty Python and Mel Brooks, and loved to tell jokes. He loved art and architecture and would sit for hours drawing floor plans for houses and castles. He collected coffee table art books. Ian was a history buff, especially military history.

He loved Jesus, and the Sermon on the Mount was his lodestar. Ian tried to live by the “Golden Rule,” and took “You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Galatians 5:14)” to heart.

Ian was a dreamer who loved his country, state, and hometown. He wanted to make the world a better place for everyone and was full of big ideas on how to accomplish that.

He believed in democracy, and the war in Ukraine was an issue he cared deeply about, especially since his paternal great-grandparents were originally from Eastern Slovakia (Slatvina). It was personal to him. Slava Ukraini!

He was preceded in death by grandparents, Steve Legat, Eloise Legat, Joe O’Bar, Wilma O’Bar; aunts, Jean Potts and Kellie O’Bar; and uncle, Alan O’Bar.

Ian is survived by parents, Greg Legat and Jo Anne O’Bar Legat; brother, Joey Legat; uncles, Wayne O’Bar, Danny O’Bar, and Robert O’Bar; aunt, Rebecca Martin; many cousins, and chosen brothers, Will Jones and Mikael Kelley.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to Autistic Self Advocacy Network (Autisticadvocacy.org), Liberty Ukraine (Libertyukraine.org), or Autism Support of Alabama (Autism-alabama.org).

Special thanks are given to the First Responders.