Justin W. Brierly

Justin W. Brierly (1905–1985) was an American educator and lawyer. He was a prominent member of Denver, Colorado society, noted for his efforts to place students into prominent universities, and as a patron of the performing arts. He is also remembered for his association with Beat Generation icons Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac.

Brierly was a graduate of Columbia University in New York City. He helped form a talent agency there before returning to Denver, where he became an English literature teacher and guidance counselor at East High School. Brierly took an active role in mentoring young men he considered bright students, to help motivate them and use his connections to place them in college. After fourteen years as a teacher, Brierly was appointed as the supervisor of college and scholarship guidance for Denver Public Schools. He also served as a committee member of the Ivy League Scholarship Board in Denver. Future aerospace CEO and Defense Department official Norman Ralph Augustine was among the students Brierly mentored. During World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill invited Brierly to England as a consultant on the evacuation of children from urban areas at risk from German bombing. Brierly retired from the school system in 1971, after thirty-six years of service.

In 1941, Brierly met Neal Cassady, then a 15-year-old juvenile delinquent who would become a significant influence on the Beat writers and a countercultural icon in his own right. Impressed by Cassady's intelligence, Brierly took an active role in Cassady's life over the next few years, helping admit him to high school, encouraging and supervising his reading, and finding employment for him. Cassady continued his criminal activities, however, and was repeatedly arrested from 1942 to 1944; on at least one of these occasions, he was released by law enforcement into Brierly's safekeeping. He and Brierly actively exchanged letters during this period even through Cassady's intermittent incarcerations; these represent Cassady's earliest surviving letters. Brierly, apparently a closeted homosexual, is also believed to have been responsible for Cassady's first homosexual experience.

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