Graves was born in Paterson and lived there for most of his life. His father, Frank Sr., worked as a reporter for the Paterson Evening News and also ran a successful vending machine company. Following his graduation from high school he enrolled at the University of Virginia, but left shortly thereafter to enlist in World War II. He served in a tank unit in Europe until he was wounded. While convalescing from shrapnel wounds Graves met his wife, Ethel, and married her when they returned to the United States.
After several years, Graves returned to elective office and was elected to the City Council. He served as its president from 1974 to 1978. During this time Graves decided to run for state office and in November 1977, he won election to the State Senate from the relatively new 35th Legislative District. He stood for reelection three times in the next ten years, as per state rules, and won all three times, the final time in 1987. Four months after taking office for his second term as a state Senator, Graves decided to run for mayor of Paterson again. He won elected to a four-year term in May 1982 and was reelected in May 1986; Paterson changed its election laws in the years following Graves' first stint as mayor to lengthen the terms of sitting mayors from three years to four.
Methods
During his time in office Graves was known as a law-and-order and hands-on mayor who was never afraid to take action when something needed to be done in Paterson or in the state legislature. He often accompanied the police on its rounds, leading raids, and would always carry a series of two-way radios and telephones with him as he went about his day. Graves was noted for driving through every Paterson neighborhood seven days a week inspecting the areas and calling the proper authorities when he saw something that he determined to be wrong. He also often pursued people for owing taxes to the city, going as far as to call the property owners himself and threatening to arrest those who did not pay. In 1966 he ordered the arrest of poet Allen Ginsberg, a Paterson native, after he said at a reading that he had smoked marijuana at Paterson's Great Falls. While serving in the State Senate, Graves pushed for stiff penalties for criminal offenses, and in 1981 wrote a law concerning gun-related offenses. The Graves Act, as it was called, mandated a minimum three-year sentence for anyone who used a firearm in commission of a crime..
Death
As 1990 began Graves was making plans to run for a third consecutive term as mayor of Paterson, as the same law changes that lengthened a mayor's term of office also removed the limits on how many consecutive terms a mayor could serve. It would not come to pass, however. On the morning of March 4, 1990, at his home in Paterson's Lakeview section, Graves was stricken with a massive heart attack. He was rushed to nearby St. Joseph's Hospital, but doctors could not revive him and he was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. He was buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa, New Jersey. Graves' Senate seat was filled by State Assemblyman John Girgenti, who was appointed to the seat and confirmed in April 1990. The vacant mayoral seat was contested between Girgenti's Assembly colleague Bill Pascrell, City Council President Rev. Albert Rowe, Freeholder Michael Adamo, and Councilman At-Large Roy Griffin. Pascrell, currently a United States Representative from New Jersey's 9th Congressional District, won the seat and served as mayor until he resigned from both of his elected positions to take his seat in Congress.
Popular culture
Graves was fictionalized as Don Bottman and portrayed by Alan North in the 1989 film Lean on Me.
