top of page
Writer's pictureLeigh Gerstenberger

Kris Kristofferson





When I read recently of the passing of Kris Kristofferson, I was surprised to feel like I had lost a friend…while not a close one, at least an acquaintance.  


From my teenage years, Kristofferson’s music has always resonated with me.  I don’t know if it was his deep, gravelly, baritone or the duets he would sing with his wife Rita Coolidge, but there always seemed to be something in the many ballads that he performed that mesmerized me.


But what surprised me most of all when learning of his passing was what I didn’t know about him.


For example, I didn’t know that he was a Rhodes scholar who earned a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England where it was said that he could recite the works of William Blake from memory. 


I was not aware that he was a Golden Gloves boxer, rugby star and football player in college.  I never knew he was a captain in the U. S. Army and a helicopter piolet who turned down an appointment to teach at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, New York to pursue a songwriting career in Nashville, TN.


While I realized that he had acted in several movies, and perhaps was best known for his role in one of the remakes of A Star Is Born with Barbara Streisand, I had forgotten that he also had roles in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore with Ellen Burstyn, and Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie in addition to roles in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Convoy, Lone Star and Heaven’s Gate.


Kristofferson’s friendship with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings who joined forces to make up the group known as The Highwaymen is of course legendary, but I did not realize that he got his start writing songs for other performers long before he became recognized as a singer/songwriter in his own right.   Some of the better-known songs he wrote were Me and Bobby McGee, Help Me Make It Through the Night and Why Me.


As I was reflecting on Kristofferson’s life a friend told me about The Dash  a poem by Linda Ellis that I thought was particularly relevant not only to Kristofferson’s life but to each of ours as well.  For more information on the background of The Dash please see this week’s Poem of the Week section or the following weblink.



If you’d like to know more about Kris Kristofferson, here’s the link to one of the many tributes to him that have appeared in the press in recent days.


94 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page