Obituaries - Aug. 11, 1999

* Bob Herbert; Created Spice Girls

Bob Herbert, 57, creator and former manager of the British pop group Spice Girls. Herbert chose the five young English women from among those who answered his ad in Stage magazine in 1996. He and his son Chris, who operated as Safe Management, were generally credited with grooming them and promoting them into international stars. But the Herberts were fired as managers in November 1997, in favor of Simon Fuller. A spokesman for the Spice Girls said the young women were shocked and saddened by the news of Herbert’s death. He had recently managed the teenage boys British pop band Five, now on a promotional trip in South America. On Monday in Windsor, England, in a car accident during heavy rain.

Jack Laskowski; UAW Vice President

Jack Laskowski, 59, United Auto Workers vice president who headed national contract talks with DaimlerChrysler AG. Laskowski served as director of the UAW DaimlerChrysler department. He was selected in March to negotiate a new contract with the auto maker’s Chrysler unit. The union’s triennial talks with Detroit’s auto makers began in June to replace a pact that expires Sept. 14. Laskowski also oversaw negotiations with the former Chrysler Corp. during the last round of national bargaining in 1996. The department represents 75,000 UAW members at more than 50 locations. Laskowski had been a UAW member since 1958, when he began working at what is now the CPC Powertrain Plant in Bay City, Mich. He was a regional director from 1992 until 1995, when he was elected vice president. On Sunday in Detroit of a heart attack.

Antonio Nava; Pentecostal Leader

Antonio C. Nava, 106, former presiding bishop of the Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus, California’s largest Latino Protestant denomination. The Pentecostal church pioneer was born Oct. 4, 1892, in Durango, Mexico, and tried to enlist with the insurrectionist forces at the outset of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. When his father objected, he moved north to California’s Imperial Valley to pick cotton. Converted to Pentecostalism in 1916, Nava began his ministry two years later, working as an evangelist and pastor in the border towns of Calexico and Mexicali. He helped guide the growth and consolidation of the Apostolic religious movement in the Southwestern United States. Nava returned to Mexico in 1928, but was recalled to the United States to become presiding bishop after the death of Francisco Llorente. In 1930, Nava severed ties with the Indianapolis-based Pentecostal Assemblies of the World and incorporated his former Iglesia de la Fe Apostolica Pentecostals as the Apostolic Assembly in California. He then sought to strengthen ties with the church’s Mexican counterpart. Nava headed an East Los Angeles congregation for several decades. He officially retired as presiding bishop in 1966 but continued to serve as an advisor. On Aug. 2 in Union City, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area.