TECH HISTORY
TENDER MEMORIES
AT JUNIOR'S GRILL, OWNER TOMMY KLEMIS TREATED EVERYONE IN THE TECH COMMUNITY LIKE FAMILY.
BY: KRISTIN BAIRD RATTINI
WHEN YOU HEAR the name Junior's Grill, what do you think of?
Your answer likely depends on which decade you were on campus and patronized this beloved mainstay of the Tech community, which closed its doors and turned off its blue neon sign in 2011.
Maybe it’s a slice of Edwards pie and a milkshake. Or the oversized slices of French toast, dusted with cinnamon. Perhaps it’s the warm chocolate chip cookies, sold three for $1. Or the first time you ate Junior’s chicken tenders, a veritable Tech rite of passage.
Whatever your particular culinary craving (we know your mouth is watering right now), everyone remembers the man behind them: Tommy Klemis, Junior’s genial and generous owner who helmed his family’s restaurant for 36 years and made sure all customers felt welcome and left well-fed.
The Family Business
Junior’s Grill was named for its original owner, Wilbur Gold Jr., who opened the restaurant at the corner of Techwood Drive and North Avenue in 1948. When Jimmy Klemis and John Chaknis—Tommy’s father and uncle—took it over in 1958, the year Tommy turned 10, they didn’t intend for him to follow in their footsteps.
“My dad told me, ‘I work like this so you don’t have to go into the restaurant business, so that you can go to Georgia Tech,’ ” Klemis recalls. When his father passed away suddenly in 1964, his mother, Lula, insisted that Klemis still pursue his own path. She took over as co-owner of Junior’s with Chaknis, a member of the Atlanta Symphony who occasionally serenaded diners on his violin.
After serving in the Marines, Klemis was accepted into the electrical engineering program at Georgia Tech in 1970. “But life came just a little bit faster than we had planned,” he says. He and his wife had an infant son, Jimmy, at home and another child—his daughter, Leigh Anne—on the way; money was tight. He left Tech after one year to work as an engineering associate at Western Electric.
In 1975, Chaknis suffered a heart attack. Lula Klemis couldn’t run Junior’s alone; she considered selling the restaurant. “My family encouraged me to try to save the business,” Klemis says. He left his job and joined Junior’s full time as co-owner with his mom. “God had a plan,” he says. “He brought me back on campus, but this time to serve Georgia Tech students instead of be one.”
Taking Care of "Their Students"
Among those students was Larry Curtin, AP 87, who patronized three incarnations of Junior’s Grill over his 15 years on campus as a student and as a staff member. Curtin lived in Techwood Dorm, which stood next to Junior’s second location. Squeezed into a former barbershop on Techwood Drive, the 28-stool diner served an average of 800 patrons a day. “Junior’s was our dining hall,” Curtin recalls. He still has a few coupons left in a Junior’s meal book, which provided $22 of Junior’s value-priced meals for $20, a deal that kept many cash-strapped students fed over the years.
To speed up the line, students often used shorthand, a “Junior’s jargon,” to order. “French strip, hold the dust” meant French toast with a strip of bacon, no cinnamon. “Top two, 10, cheese and choke it” meant the top two vegetables from the daily list of eight options and a 10-ounce hamburger steak with sautéed onions and cheese on top. “Honeymooner” for lettuce alone. The most popular call was “dress two cheese side”: two cheeseburgers with everything and an order of French fries.
In 1987, Junior’s expanded into the adjacent space vacated by the Engineer’s Bookstore. It was there—in the larger Junior’s 3.0—that Klemis hosted an unforgettable event for Curtin and his friends: a candlelight dinner for the 12 “Gentlemen of Techwood” and their dates after the dorm formal. Klemis brought porcelain plates from home and dressed in a tuxedo to serve ribeye steaks and baked potatoes to the appreciative guests. “I was overwhelmed,” Curtin says. “Outside of my family, there had never been an adult in my life who went above and beyond to do something so special for me.”
Klemis, his mother, and his aunt Anne Pamfilis—affectionately known to all customers as “Miss Anne”—constantly looked after “their students” and cared about what was happening in their lives. “Sometimes when the ladies worked the register, you had to remind them, ‘Hey, quit talking so much! There’s a line!’ ” Klemis says with a laugh. If a customer looked glum after an exam, Miss Anne might slip them some chocolate chip cookies. If a student couldn’t pay, they ate anyway, their meal extended on credit.
Klemis’ generosity was not forgotten when Junior’s Grill was torn down in October 1993 to make way for dorms for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Alumni and supporters rallied for the restaurant’s revival. In February 1994, Georgia Tech handed Klemis the key to the new Junior’s Grill: a 4,000-square-foot restaurant in the Bradley Building under Tech Tower, “in the best neighborhood ever,” Klemis says.
BJOC (Big Junior's on Campus)
In its new location, Junior’s Grill became even more entwined in Tech life. “When we came on campus, I said, ‘We’re going to focus on the traditions of Tech,’ ” Klemis recalls. He launched an annual trivia night to kick off Homecoming Week. “I learned more about Georgia Tech during those nights than I could ever learn in a book,” he says.
Billiee Pendleton-Parker, “BPP,” encouraged Klemis to sponsor a student photo contest, with the winning snaps displayed in Junior’s. “There was no one who loved the students more than she did,” he says of BPP, who received a Junior’s chicken tender basket at her retirement party. She passed away in January 2021, the same year she was named an Honorary Alumna by the Alumni Association. “She said, ‘Let’s see the campus through their eyes.’ The photos truly captured the beauty of our campus.”
The photos hung alongside other Tech mementos, including a piece of the goalpost from the 1990 National Championship game. The décor, however, was never what drew customers to Junior’s; it was the food and Klemis and the company.
There were the Theta Xi fraternity brothers, who claimed Junior’s hightop table as their own every Friday for group lunches. Laura Giglio, EE 10, MS ECE 11, remembers her frequent breakfast meetings over French toast with her mentor, Mahera “Mimi” Philobos, MS AE 83, architect of Tech’s Women in Engineering program. Giglio got to know Klemis well when she returned to Tech to work for the Alumni Association and floated the idea—still on hold—of a Junior’s cookbook to benefit the Students’ Temporary Assistance and Resources (STAR)’s Klemis Kitchen. (See the story "No One Goes Away Hungry" below.) “Tommy was like a grandpa,” she says. “He was everybody’s grandpa.”
Web Development Manager Scott Riggle and his wife, Associate Dean of Students Colleen Riggle, were among the countless couples to have their first date at Junior’s. “We went there many times after that for lunch and breakfast, and in later years they’d always ask about our daughter,” he says. “They remembered everybody.”
The student rap duo The GTGs even memorialized Klemis and Junior’s in two songs: “
Junior’s Grill Jam” and “
Y Tommy Dice,” on which Klemis himself rapped under the name “Tommy K.” The tunes, namecheck the restaurant’s all-star cast of employees, including Miss Anne and Walter Gilbert, the resident poet on staff. They share the history of Junior’s. And they pay heartfelt tribute to Klemis.
“Tommy was one of the most encouraging people I encountered at Tech,” says Brandon “Swaff” Swafford, ID 07, one half of the GTGs. “His love poured out to anyone he served.”
When Klemis realized in April 2011 it was time to hang up his apron, he tried to close up shop quietly. But word got out. On April 21, supporters streamed in from around town and out of town, lining up as they had at the 28-seat diner on Techwood Drive for one last chance to talk with Klemis, Gilbert, and “Miss Anne.”
The turnout left Klemis speechless. “I still think about, ‘How did our little family business end up on this amazing campus?’ ” he says. “I thank God all the time for all those years of being involved with the students.”
His decade in retirement has been largely focused on his family—including Miss Anne, now 92. He and his wife, Lis, spend a lot of time visiting their nine grandchildren in Tennessee. While he doesn’t cook much these days, he’s always happy to indulge when the grandkids want to play Junior’s. “I’ll call out, ‘Order In!’ ” he says, “and they’ll respond, ‘Cook me a French toast!’ ”
No One Goes Away Hungry: The Klemis Kitchen
Tommy Klemis never let a student go away hungry from Junior’s Grill. In tribute, in February 2015, Georgia Tech’s Students’ Temporary Assistance and Resources (STAR) opened the Klemis Kitchen, a 24/7 on-campus food pantry for students facing food insecurity.
“The honor moved me to tears,” Klemis says.
In the Fall 2021 semester, over 100 students have requested access to Klemis Kitchen for at least a few meals each week. The student-led organization Campus Kitchen collects leftovers from the dining halls and packages them into individual meals for the pantry. There’s also a supply of shelf-stable foods collected through food drives.
“It has been exciting and inspiring to see how folks have rallied around the Klemis Kitchen and want to participate in removing that stressor of food insecurity for their fellow students,” says Steve Fazenbaker, director of STAR.
“I was thrilled to find out about Klemis Kitchen, since the strain of collegiate life has left me food insecure for many years now,” says Nadia Qutob, a fourth-year physics major. “Klemis Kitchen gave me the food I needed to keep my health up and the stability I needed to get me through a difficult semester.”
Donations can be made at
mygeorgiatech.gatech.edu/giving/starprogram.