Maurice and Mary Julian will be honored locally in hall of fame

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce will induct six business leaders and families into its Hall of Fame on Nov. 13. The Daily Tar Heel will feature each of its inductees. Maurice and Mary Julian will be among those inducted.

When they met, he was a young Jewish boy from Massachusetts living in the southern part of heaven, and she was a Southern Baptist, Tar Heel born and bred.

Maurice and Mary Julian were never meant to be together, but they overcame the odds and their families’ disapproval to create their own legacy in a town that is thanking them 72 years later.

On Nov. 13, the Julians will be inducted into the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Business Hall of Fame in recognition of their life-long dedication not only to business but also to Chapel Hill.

“The Julians, we felt like, really set the standard for retail in Chapel Hill and on Franklin Street,” said Bob Woodruff, chairman of the selection committee. “I mean, Maurice was this great rags to riches story.”

Maurice Julian came to Chapel Hill in 1934 for an affordable education and never left. But getting by was not the easiest feat for a young man who grew up with very little.

“There were no scholarships of any kind, and he literally started work when he was 5, so he had a thousand jobs just to scrape together enough to keep paying for school the next time,” said Missy Julian Fox, the couple’s daughter. “So we think of dad as a serial entrepreneur.”

Fox said her father would sell anything he could, from corsages to programs at football games. He and his brother, Milton, opened a Chapel Hill bicycle shop, which also doubled as a place to get a tennis racket restrung.

“The turning point event was in 1942. The Navy used our campus as a pre-flight training school, so dad said overnight there were 5,000 new men in town, and when they checked in they were given a piece of paper. It had all the supplies that they needed and you came to Franklin Street to find it,” Fox said. “He said, ‘I could do that.’”

He opened Julian’s at 140 E. Franklin St., the space now occupied by Sugarland, in the hopes of supplying the men with everything they would need for their time in Chapel Hill.

Maurice quickly established himself as a premiere arbiter of taste in Chapel Hill, and Julian’s thrived.

“Maurice had incredible taste, just incredible taste,” said Maria Villanueva, a longtime family friend and Julian’s employee. “He could look at you and just know what was going to look good on you. He was a trendsetter here in this area.”

After eloping with Mary in 1947, Maurice tried diligently to get his bride to join his business. The new Mrs. Julian very reluctantly accepted.

“They were both very independent, but just this sort of yin and yang,” Fox said.

“Knowing that mom said, ‘Not on your life,’ and the fact that she ate those words and came into the business — she was always just my mom helping dad, but it wouldn’t have been successful without her.”

Fox recalled coming into the store after school and watching her mother label and send off thousands of bills to the parents of students who had charged their purchases.

“She was the keeper of the cash register,” Fox said. “She had a great business sense and dad was a genius at that. She was the softness, though, where dad could have the vision, and she would do the rest.”

From giving students a job when they needed one to being the first to embroider the Old Well onto a tie, Maurice and Mary Julian worked to not only give back, but also to create UNC traditions that their children could carry on for years to come.

Maurice Julian died in 1993, and Mary Julian died three years later in 1996.

“I don’t think you can separate Chapel Hill and Julian’s,” Fox said. “I think that this is a place where a Julian’s could thrive. Its very core and heart is a personification of Chapel Hill.”

Seventy-two years after Maurice Julian started it all, Julian’s has changed in many ways. Now located at 135 E. Franklin St., the store is run by a third generation of Julians — Fox’s son, Bart.

But the trait that never seems to disappear is the spirit of Maurice and Mary Julian.

“For them to be recognized for really playing a role in this town that they chose and that they loved so much,” Fox said. “It inspires us in their memory, and it’s a wonderful legacy for our children.”

Now, sitting in the store where she can look out the front windows and see the building that housed her parents’ legacy, a misty-eyed Fox says the business will always be motivated by the two who started it all.

“I’m proud of mom and dad,” Fox said. “I’ve always been proud of them. I know that everything that I’ve done and everything that we’ve done is to make them proud of us too.”

city@dailytarheel.com