Bob Gries followed in his father’s footsteps to attend Yale University. But the Cleveland native returned to the city after graduating in 1951 to join the May Company, which his mother’s father had built into the largest department store chain in Ohio.
“I always knew it was my job to stay here and try to make some difference as a fifth-generation Clevelander,” he says.
Mr. Gries is fiercely proud of his lineage. A paternal great-great-grandfather, Simson Thorman, was the first Jewish settler in Cleveland, arriving in the early 1830s from a small town in Bavaria. He established the city’s first synagogue and was elected to City Council.
Paternal grandfather Rabbi Moses Gries was rabbi of Cleveland’s largest Reform temple and was instrumental in the founding of numerous Jewish and community organizations. Maternal grandfather Nathan Dauby was the builder of the May Company and a leading business and philanthropic leader.
Mr. Gries’s father, businessman and philanthropist Robert Hays Gries, was one of the founders of both the Cleveland Rams and the Cleveland Browns football teams.
The younger Gries has continued his family’s rich legacy in business, sports, politics, Jewish causes and philanthropy.
In the early 1960s he started a career in venture capitalism, an industry then in its infancy.
As treasurer of Carl Stokes’s mayoral campaign in 1967, he had a front row seat to history. He continued being politically active with such notable figures as the late George Voinovich and Michael R. White.
Since age 51, Mr. Gries – author of “Aging with Attitude” – has traveled to 45 countries on all seven continents in his pursuit of physical adventures such as long-distance running, mountain climbing, biking and high-altitude hiking.
At age 89 he still serves on the boards of American Jewish Committee, Boy Scouts of America, Cleveland Play House and Vocational Guidance Services – each for 50 years and counting – and a half dozen other organizations.
Mr Gries credits much of his success to his wife Sally Gries, with whom he remains active in the philanthropic landscape of Cleveland.
All but one of the sixth generation of the Gries family live in Cleveland and are finding ways to give back to the city. Six of the seven who make up the seventh generation have grown up in Cleveland. “I hope and expect some of them will settle here and carry on the family legacy,” he says.
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