Roman Stanley Gribbs was born on December 29, 1925, and died on April 5, 2016.
He was an American politician.
He was the Mayor of Detroit from 1970 to 1974.
Then, Roman served as a judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals.
After he left high school in 1944, Roman Gribbs served in the Army until 1948.
In 1952, Roman graduated from the University of Detroit with a degree in economics and accounting and received a law degree from the same institution in 1954.
Gribbs was also an instructor at the university from 1955 to 195 and he then became an assistant prosecutor in 1957, a position he held until 1964.
Roman entered private practice in 1964 and ran for a seat as a Recorder’s Court judge in 1966, but lost.
Mr. Gribbs was appointed the sheriff of Wayne County, in 1968 later winning a full four-year term.
But, then he was elected mayor of Detroit in 1969, defeating opponent Richard H. Austin who later became Michigan Secretary of State.
Choosing not too live in the Manoogian Mansion, as an official residence of the mayor of Detroit, Gribbs remain living in Rosedale Park Historic District (Detroit, Michigan), a neighborhood in northwest Detroit.
Gribbs declined to seek re-election in 1973 and was replaced by Coleman Young who was elected Detroit’s first African-American mayor in November of that year.
When he left the mayor’s office, Gribbs returned to private practice.
He then became a circuit court judge in 1975.
Roman was elected to the Michigan Court of Appeals in 1982, upon which he served until his retirement in 2001.
Roman Gribbs retired to Northville in suburban Detroit and conducts a private practice in mediation and arbitration.
And he was also the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Piast Institute, a research center devoted to Polish and Polish American affairs.
Roman Gribbs was married to Katherine Stratis (1932–2011) from 1954 to 1982, and together they had four daughters and a son.
Then Roman married Leola Young Barr in 1990.
Roman Gribbs passed away at 90 yrs old, in Northville, Michigan from cancer.