Posted on: Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Services set for Filipino community leader
By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
Prominent Filipino community leader, civil servant and journalist Zachary G. Labez will be remembered during "a day with Zack" memorial program Saturday.
Labez, senior community services planner with the Office of Community Services in the state Department of Labor, died Jan. 12 of a massive stroke. He was 53.
Labez followed in the footsteps of his father, also a community leader and journalist, Ricardo Labez, and his wife, Experanza Garma.
As a student in 1968, Labez was the sole Philippine delegate to the World Youth Forum at the United Nations. He was editor in chief of the Far Eastern University High School newspaper before coming to the United States in 1969.
After eight years in the U.S. Navy in San Diego, the Pentagon and Pearl Harbor, Labez lived in California for several years before settling in Hawai'i in 1985.
Here, he served as deputy director of the City and County Department of Information Technology from 1985 until he joined state government in 1997.
Labez served as president of the United Filipino Council of Hawaii, president of the Filipino Coalition for Solidarity, executive director of the Philippine Medical Association of Hawaii, and adviser to the World War II Fil-Am Veterans, Hawaii Chapter.
He was deeply involved in Filipino culture and performing arts, and had been a member of the Honolulu-based Pamana Dancers, a U.S. affiliate of the Bayanihan Philippine Dance Company. He founded the Sulyap Philippine Company for the Performing Arts in 1986, and more recently was a teaching resource for performance groups throughout the state.
As a journalist, Labez worked as associate editor of the Hawaii Filipino Chronicle from 1995 to 1999, and was a contributing writer and then editor of the Fil-Am Courier at the time of his death.
Labez is survived by sisters Alma Elmer, Joy Labez, Pat Muntz and Faith Labez; and brothers Hipolito, Balthazar and Lowell.
A prayer service will be Saturday at 10 a.m. at Borthwick Mortuary Chapel, followed by inurnment at Hawaiian Memorial Park in Kane'ohe at 2:45 p.m. A candlelight gathering beginning at 3:30 p.m. at the Ho'omaluhia Botanical Garden in Kane'ohe will conclude the day's events.
