Julie Kohl, 98; Owner of Diners Near USC

Julie Kohl, who endeared herself to generations of USC students and Coliseum fans with her two eateries near campus, Julie’s Trojan Barrel and Julie’s Restaurant, has died. She was 98.

Kohl, one of the first women restaurateurs in the city, died Monday in the Los Angeles rest home where she had lived for the last four months. She had suffered a number of mild strokes in recent years.

A native Angeleno, Kohl owned the Trojan Barrel on Figueroa Street from 1975 until it closed in 1999. But it never quite matched the popularity-or generated the lore-of her original Julie’s Restaurant a block away at 37th and Flower streets.

From 1941 to 1975, Kohl played hostess at Julie’s to everyone from Bob Hope to Ronald Reagan and countless other sports fans either heading to or coming from the Los Angeles Coliseum, which over the years was home to USC football, UCLA football and NFL football with the Rams and Raiders.

“She knew everybody-and to know her was to love her,” friend Anne Linehan said. “She just always greeted her guests like they were coming to her home instead of to her restaurant.’

Those guests included several generations of USC students, faculty and administrators who were her steady and loyal customers.

“The old saying at SC was, ‘Meet me at Julie’s,”’ said Chris Petcoff, who first ate at the restaurant in 1961 and became a close friend of Kohl.

“It was a great Trojan atmosphere, just a very upbeat place to go,” said Art Bartner, director of the Trojan marching band.

Kohl filled her restaurant with framed pictures that provided a virtual history of USC athletics.

Julie’s was also known for outdoor tables around a swimming pool, whose presence no one seems to be able to explain.

“There were USC boys who had too much to drink and fell in there,” Petcoff said. “Boy, she really kicked them out of there, but they all loved her.’

In 1982, USC basketball Coach Stan Morrison promised to do a cannonball from the roof into the pool fully clothed if the Trojans got into the NCAA playoffs. Morrison ultimately had to come through on his promise.

Kohl was said to have known every USC coach since 1941. John McKay, football coach from 1960 to 1975, became a close friend.

McKay always held court at booth No. 1, where he plotted plays and gabbed with his coaching staff and any reporter who pulled up a chair. When McKay left to coach the NFL Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Kohl had his booth dismantled and shipped to Tampa Bay, where it was installed in his new restaurant hangout.

“It was kind of a watering hole for us,” said Marv Goux, who first went to Julie’s Restaurant as a USC football player in the 1950s and continued the habit as an assistant coach at USC from 1957 to 1982.

“The [McKay] booth was always reserved for us,” Goux said. “People would come in and say, ‘Why can’t I have that one?’ Julie would say, ‘No one ever gets that one.’ She was great. She loved the University of Southern California.’

The daughter of French immigrants, Kohl was born on North Broadway on the edge of Chinatown. Her father, Casimir Mazet, owned the Parisian Bakery on Ord Street. As a child, Kohl helped deliver bread to restaurants with her father, who later became a partner in the Franco-American Bakery.

As a young woman, according to Linehan, Kohl was something of a socialite who spent time traveling in Europe. In 1932, her father purchased land near the Coliseum to set up food and souvenir stands to cash in on the Olympics.

“He contacted his daughter and said, ‘You get home here because you’re going to help me,’ ” said Lineman. “He set up a hot dog stand and she ran that.’

A 1998 story on Kohl in the monthly magazine of the Jonathan Club in downtown Los Angeles said Kohl once worked as a hostess and secretary at a local restaurant. When it closed, her father suggested she go into business for herself.

“I said to him, ‘What do I know about food? I’m a front-of-the-house person,”’ Kohl said in the 1998 story.

Her father suggested she turn an empty building on property he owned on Figueroa near Exposition Boulevard into a restaurant called Julie’s.

Thirty-four years later in 1975, Kohl decided to cut down on her workload, leased out Julie’s and opened the nearby Trojan Barrel.

Bartner, the USC marching band director, was among the old regulars who followed her to the new location. A member of the USC marching band’s support group, Kohl for years donated money for band scholarships. In 1995, she donated $100,000 for the university’s new band facility, which is known as the Julie Kohl Band Facility.

In 1985, she donated the 1.45 acres that housed Julie’s Restaurant, then valued at $750,000. Over the next 14 years, she donated nearly $500,000 to the university, including gifts to the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Until last year, Kohl never missed a USC home game, and her loyalty did not go unnoticed.

Since she turned 90, she always received a birthday present from the USC athletic department: a football jersey bearing her age in giant numbers.

In 1995, she was inducted into the USC Athletic Hall of Fame.

Kohl, who was married four times, had no children.

A funeral Mass will be said at 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Calvary Mortuary, 4201 Whittier Blvd., Los Angeles.