ROAF’S PROFESSIONALISM TOUTED

By Lewis Delavan/STEPHENS MEDIA

A friend of Andree Layton Roaf recalled her thoroughness as a jurist.

Former state Appeals Court Judge Wendell Griffen said she was always well prepared. He chose Roaf to administer his oath of office for the appeals court in 1996.

“If you had a case before Judge Roaf, you had better have your homework done and your pencil sharpened, because she would have read every decision she could have read on it,” Griffen said.

Roaf, a former state Supreme Court justice and Court of Appeals judge, collapsed Wednesday in her Little Rock office. She was pronounced dead at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Then-Gov. Jim Guy Tucker appointed Roaf to the Arkansas Supreme Court in January 1995 to serve out a vacancy. A year later, she was appointed to the state appeals court by then-Gov. Mike Huckabee to serve on the court when it was expanded from six to 12 judges. She was elected to the court in 2000 and served until 2006.

U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson Jr. appointed Roaf to her current position May 30, 2007, as head of the federal Office of Desegregation Monitoring, responsible for overseeing the North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts’ compliance with their long-standing school desegregation plans.

She was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 1996. That year she also received the Gayle Pettus Pontz Outstanding Arkansas Woman Attorney award and was bestowed an honorary juris doctor degree from her undergraduate alma mater, Michigan State University.

Roaf was a past trustee for the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, past president and board member of Friends of KLRE-FM, past president and board member of Arkansas for the Arts and had served on the state Code of Ethics Commission.

She had served on the Jefferson County Democratic Committee; the Parent Teacher Association; the Jefferson County Committee on Black Adoptions; the Arkansas Council of Human Relations; and the League of Women Voters.

Roaf is survived by her husband, Clifton Roaf, and four adult children, including retired NFL player Willie Roaf. Funeral arrangements will be announced by Brown Funeral Home of Pine Bluff.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.