Kris Kristofferson

Kris Kristofferson was born into a military family in Brownsville, Texas. He was a star football player at Pomona High School and was considered a "straight arrow" by his friends. He told Charlie Rose in 1998 that "football was more important to me than music" and he wanted to be a football player and a writer. He also was an avid boxer, but a series of concussions derailed his plans to be an athlete.

Kristofferson was awarded the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship in 1958 shortly after winning an Atlantic magazine short story contest. He admired the poet William Blake, who he described as a "life ring," and went on to graduate summa cum laude from Oxford University in London with a Bachelor of Philosophy in English literature. While at Oxford, he performed country and folk music under the name Kris Carson.

His mother was terribly disappointed when he left the military to take up a career as a country singer, and according to Kristofferson, she never got over it, telling him that she'd rather have a gold star in the window than a son on his career path. The gold star was something households of soldiers who were killed in battle would put in their windows.