George Carlin, who died on Sunday at age 71, is not the most famous graduate of Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. That honor would probably go to either
Martin Scorsese or
Regis Philbin.
But Mr. Carlin is without doubt the most famous Hayesman who never graduated.
And 25 years ago, the acerbic comic and well-known atheist took part in a fund-raising dinner to honor the priest who actually suggested to young Mr. Carlin that he might want to go to another school. As he himself noted in his 10-minute riff on the school, you always knew trouble awaited when the priests started calling you “Mister.”
Mr. Carlin arrived at Hayes in the early 1950s, part of the class of 1955. But after three semesters, he left the school, involuntarily, and enrolled — briefly, too — at Bishop Dubois High School in Harlem. Over the years, he would drop references to Hayes, whose colors are the cardinal and gold (in one talk show appearance he went on about how the colors looked suspiciously like red and yellow).
