Obituary #9: Jami Cassady
Brother's touching eulogy to Neal daughter
Next month, we commemorate the centenary of Neal Cassady. Very sadly, Neal and Carolyn’s middle child, their daughter Jami, will not be able to participate in that landmark occasion. She died yesterday, January 16th, 2026, aged 75, after a period of illness. Her younger brother John, a regular contributor to Rock and the Beat Generation, pays a tender tribute to his sister…
By John Allen Cassady
Born Melanie Jane Cassady on January 26th, 1950, in San Francisco, California, her mother Carolyn named her after the character ‘Melanie Hamilton’, played by Olivia de Havilland in the film Gone With The Wind.
Whenever Jack Kerouac was in town, he would visit our home in Los Gatos and, in the evenings, little Jami would sit on his lap and he would read to her, mostly the ‘Oz’ books or Winnie the Pooh. When Jami was all grown up, I noticed that the license plate frame on her car read ‘Jack Liked Me Best’, which was true!
When she was very young, maybe 7 (?), Mom enrolled her (and sister Cathy) in the Los Gatos Academy of Dance, taught by one Bud Curtis. Jami excelled at ballet – she had a gift for it – and she and Cathy performed in many recitals, from the stage at Montalvo, Saratoga, to the San Jose Civic Auditorium.
Of course I had to attend each recital (Mom couldn’t afford a babysitter) but it got to the point where if I heard the ‘Nutcracker’ theme one more time around Christmas, I might HURT someone! (Ha ha).
Right out of High School, Jami got a Scholarship to the American Ballet Theater in New York, led by the dance teacher Dimitri Romanoff (Pretty cool cred!). Well, as a single 19-year-old girl in Manhattan? It was ‘Let’s party!’
Back to Bud Curtis. He taught the girls to ‘turn out’, which meant that you put your ‘toe shoes’ heel to heel, and do ‘pleeease’ (or whatever they’re called. You get the idea). Well, that builds up what’s called the quadricep tendon inside the patella (knee cap).
Now, I’m no Doctor (of Medicine, that is, ha ha) but, in New York, Jami went ‘up on toe’ once, and that tendon just blew her kneecap off, right around to the back of her leg. Ouch! She came home in a cast, hip to ankle, so her ‘dancing career’ was over.
She could have been the next Margot Fonteyn! (Or whoever that famous dancer was who got busted for smoking pot on a rooftop in SF with Rudolf Nureyev).
A sideline. While she was in NY, I piled her new Datsun (now Nissan) sports car into a phone pole on Quito Road, one drunken night. Hey, what are brothers for, right?
So I will meet you on the ‘Other Side’ my Beloved Sister. It’s a Date, so don’t be Late. I’ll pick you up in my ‘88’ (Our Dad’s favorite Buick Model).
May Peace Be With You, Dear Jami, For Eternity.
Luv, Johnny
Beautiful tribute to someone who lived in the orbit of literary giants yet carved her own path. The detail about that license plate frame says so much about Jami's spirit and the unique intimacy she had with Kerouac. My grandfather was a dancer too, and that knee injury story is brutal when you think about all those years of training just evaporating in a moment. What could've been a career-defining tregedy instead became just one chapter in what sounds like a full lif.
RIP Jami. She was so friendly when I visited her home a few years ago, showing me her various Beat memorabilia including Carolyn's excellent paintings of Jack, Neal, Ginsberg, etc. She let me hold Neal's famous hammer too. We stayed in touch and I was hoping to see her tonight at the Neal 100th birthday event in Berkeley. Thanks for this post.