Neal Cassady wasn’t exactly honor-roll material while a student at Denver’s East High School. He spent too much time honing the skills, some of them shady, that would make him the hero of “On the Road” and a Beat Generation icon.
Fact is, Cassady never graduated from the brick edifice on East Colfax Avenue that he attended (spottily) in the early 1940s.
But on Friday, Cassady, who died in 1968, will receive an honorary degree from the school. Not bad for a guy raised on Denver’s Skid Row who spent most of his teen years hot-wiring cars for joy rides rather than studying for exams.
“Cassady’s time at East is really kind of an incomplete story,” said Dick Nelson, a retired English and debate teacher at East who is the school’s historian. “We did manage to dig up his registration card, but his transcript has disappeared.
“He left a small footprint at East, but he is part of the school.”
The quest to get Cassady a diploma began a year ago when Mark Bliesener, a Denver Beat historian, had a chat with East High literature teachers Mark Ajluni and Michael Hernandez.
“We were talking about Neal’s days at East, and they asked if he had graduated,” Bliesener recalled. “I told them he hadn’t, and they said, ‘Let’s get him a diploma.’ Then we kind of dug into it.”
With the wheels set in motion, the school decided to grant Cassady his diploma about two months ago.
The diploma ceremony, which will be attended by Cassady’s daughters Jami and Cathy, ties in with the third annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash. That event will be held Friday at the Mercury Cafe, 2199 California St. Readings and music will be featured.
Any discussion of Cassady’s time at East must include Justin Brierly, a prominent Denver educator who mentored the teenager, who was in and out of reformatories.
“Brierly brought him to East because he saw he was a bright kid and had potential,” Nelson said. “But he was not really cut out for formal education. He was one of those kids who never really fit in.”
There has long been speculation that Brierly’s interest was more than paternal. Some biographers think that Cassady, who was bisexual, had his first male sexual experience with Brierly.
So what would Cassady think about the degree? Although a voracious reader, the man who inspired Kerouac, was name-checked in Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and drove Ken Kesey’s bus “Further” during the ’60s “acid tests” was an iconoclast of the first rank. (Granted, he was also a doting father and hard-working railroad man.)
Bliesener wondered about that, too.
“I was in London last year and met with Carolyn Cassady, Neal’s ex-,” Bliesener said. “I asked her, ‘What would Neal make of this? Would he think it’s silly?’ “
Any concern was put to rest.
“She told me he’d be honored,” Bliesener said. “His life was all about bettering himself. Maybe not in a formal way, but he was the classic lifelong learner who educated himself.”
Cassady would have turned 86 on Feb. 8.
“Neal was an inspiration and muse for Kerouac and Ginsberg,” Bliesener said. “He arguably started the Beat Generation. And he also served as a bridge between the Beats and the hippies.
“He was a real kernel of originality.”
Now the man so famous for going his own way has something in common with millions of Americans: a high-school diploma.
William Porter: 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com
