Tom Joubran, R.I.P.

Tom Joubran, a legendary Flintoid perhaps most widely known as the owner of the Mikatam Lounge, died on Friday. Ron Fonger of The Flint Journal reports:

Joubran was a Genesee County news-maker for decades, opening attention-getting businesses and locking horns repeatedly with former county prosecutors Arthur Busch and Robert Leonard.

He emerged as a key figure in a criminal investigation of Donna D. Poplar, a former county and city of Flint official, who was eventually found guilty of bilking Joubran out of $50,000 on the pretense that she could stop a criminal investigation of him.

Joubran immigrated to the United States in 1950 and was hired by his uncle at Mansour Supermarket in Flint Township, working his way up to assistant manager of the store.

The Detroit News Says Former Flintoid Tom Gores Is Considering Purchasing the Detroit Pistons

The Detroit News is reporting that billionaire Flint native Tom Gores is the leading candidate to purchase the Detroit Pistons.

Gores was profiled by the San Diego Reader last year after he purchased the San Diego Union-Tribune. The article devotes a lot of ink to Tom Joubran, the man who was instrumental in bringing Gores to Flint and mentored him as he grew up in the Vehicle City.

Matt Potter reports:

In a March 19 story announcing its takeover by Platinum Equity, the Union-Tribune reported that Gores had “immigrated to America with his Greek family when he was 5 and eventually became a U.S. citizen.” But there is more to the story of Tom Gores and his large, extended family.

He was mentored through childhood, adolescence, and college by Tom Joubran, who became a grocer after arriving in this country and battled years of ethnic bias and criminal charges that he attributes to jealousy and discrimination because he came from the Middle East.

It was Joubran who sponsored the 1969 immigration of the Gores family, including his sister Marie, from Nazareth to Flint, where many members of the Joubran family live.

“I’m so glad I brought them in here,” Joubran said last week. “I provided them a house to live. They worked for me, and I paid them money.”

Tom Gores “was the carry-out boy in my grocery store and was in the produce department,” Joubran told the Flint Journal in 2007. “The apron he wore was bigger than him. He was very small for his age.… But look at him today. I’m so proud of him and all of his brothers and sisters. They were all dynamic kids. I knew they were going to be something from the day they came in.”

Dan Shriner, a former reporter for the Flint Journal, recalls that photos of the Gores brothers lined the walls of Joubran’s office, including one of Tom’s older brother Alec standing with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Joubran spoke with pride of how he had mentored the brothers in the promised land of America.

“I do know that he’s extremely proud of them,” says Shriner. “They’re in touch often. They really stay in touch. I don’t know about what, but they are in touch with great regularity.”

The Mikatam Lounge: Memories of Warm Beer Versus Fire

The former Mikatam Lounge burns to the ground? I'm shocked! Surely if the place were still open for business the 30 for 1 beer special would have doused the flames.

Tom Joubran Gets Profiled in San Diego

Flint legend Tom Joubran is the subject of an exhaustive profile in the San Diego Reader.

Journalist Matt Potter does a great job telling Joubran's rags-to-riches story, quoting liberally from former Flint Journal reporter Dan Shriner:

“The thing about Mr. Joubran is that he’s basically brought so many of his relatives and family members here,” notes Shriner, the former Flint Journal reporter who covered Joubran and his run-ins with the law during the 1980s and 1990s. “Just dozens and dozens of people he’s brought here over the years.

“He’s been an interesting character for a long time, I’ll give him that,” Shriner continues. “He came here, had like $25 to his name, couldn’t speak a word of English, did the immigrant thing — worked hard and eventually bought his own grocery store and kind of grew things from there.

“He’s owned several bars, but the big one that everybody remembers him for was the Mikatam,” says Shriner. “It was named after his son Michael, his daughter Kathy, and his youngest daughter Tammy: Mi-Ka-Tam.

“That was a huge bar, and he did business like nobody else. Frankly, what he did, I thought, was brilliant. What he would do was that he would charge a $10 cover charge, and this place would hold 5000 people. He told me he could easily get 3000 to 5000 people in there without a problem. Now, it was packed, mind you, but he would do it if he could, and he frequently did."

But the story doesn't shy away from the accusations made against Joubran over the years:

He has endured decades of controversy: In 1980, during testimony before a United States Senate subcommittee, the executive director of the Saginaw Valley Crime Commission listed him as a “person of interest,” purportedly involved in “organized criminal activities” in the Flint, Michigan area.

His nemesis was Genesee County prosecutor Arthur Busch, who grew up in a blue-collar household near Flint and counts among his high school friends Michael Moore, the film director who began his career publishing the Flint Voice, an alternative newspaper.

“As far as I’m concerned, he’s a gangster, and I don’t care if you print it,” Busch, now in private law practice, said of Joubran during a recent telephone interview. Over the years, Busch accused Joubran of a litany of crimes. One case involved a charge of felonious assault brought by Busch against Joubran in 1995. It was described in a November 2003 Michigan Court of Appeals document.

Overall, it's a comprehensive piece that's worth reading in full here.