Leonardo Ospina Villada

Leonardo (Leo) Ospina Villada, was mi amor, daddy, husband, son, brother, uncle, prankster, friend, the best part of my life, the hero of his extended family, a hilarious friend, and a bright and memorable person to anyone he met. He moved to the US from Colombia when he was 18 years old and spoke no English.

During his first job as a mechanic, when someone would ask him for a hammer, he would bring the whole toolkit because he didn’t know what they were asking for. Through immense dedication and drive, Leo went on to not only learn English enough to impress me and make me fall in love with him, but also to achieve his dream of becoming an Engineer as so many others in his family had. Engineering, understanding how things work, and building things were central aspects of his personality. He always had to have a “project” going whether that was building enhancements for his airplanes or designing an ingenious solution to corral our dogs. Flying was another central part of him, not just as a hobby or general interest, but something that went to his core. While I would be reading novels, Leo would literally be reading a manual for one of his airplanes to better understand how it worked, and he would sometimes burst out “ahhh this is amazing!” as he understood how some aspect of how it fit together.

How we met is a meet/cute story that all our friends and family will remember. I was teaching English as a second language and Leo’s mother, Stella, was one of my students. She would always tell me how “I must meet her son” while also telling Leo “you must meet my teacher.” Leo later told me that he thought I was an old lady by the way his mom described me. One day he came to our class and when I saw an attractive Latino man walk past the window, I figured he must be a student, so I went out to greet him, saying slowly “ARE YOU HERE FOR THE ENGLISH CLASS?” He responded in perfect English “No I’m here for my mom” before proceeding to ask for my number. From that moment on we rarely spent a day apart. From taking me merengue dancing to dropping everything to help me move out of an 11th story apartment with no power to helping nurse me through an unexpected illness to supporting me in school, he made me fall in love with him completely.

We got married in August 2016 and were thrilled last summer to discover we’d be expecting a baby together. We welcomed our baby boy, Oliver, in April 2018 and Leo dove right into daddy-hood. From swim lessons to bath time to getting up with him in the mornings for daddy time, Leo was so excited for all of it. He would sometimes look over to me while Oliver was sleeping and say “how can I love him SOOO much! If I had known this before we would have had babies years ago!”

Leo’s arrival in my life was like a beautiful and unexpected lightning bolt, bringing me mi amor, my beautiful baby boy, and our wonderful life together and his departure from it leaves me with a huge hole in my heart. I know if he were here now, he would be working on a plan to help me fix it and amor I’m going to keep looking for signs from you to help me do just that, both for myself and our beautiful boy.

~Catherine Villada

“Leonardo “Leo” Ospina Villada. Ingeniero de sistemas y piloto, soñador incansable. Leo llego a Estados Unidos de 15 años buscando alcanzar sus sueños de volar e inventar, siempre desde su nines era un soñador, un ingeniero queriendo alcanzar nuevas alturas.

El camino no fue fácil pero nos enseñaste a todos que con sacrificio y empeño todo es posible. Siempre estabas para tu familia y todas las personas a tu alrededor en cualquier momento y a cualquier hora. Siempre había una sonrisa y unas ganas de ayudar a los demás. En esta corta vida en la tierra alcanzaste la felicidad rodeado de tu familia.En estos últimos meses nos demostraste lo que un verdadero padre debe ser.

Te extrañaremos por siempre tu familia que te adora y extrañará siempre nuestro ángel soñador“

~Mauricio Ospina-Villada