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Before he rose to prominence in the ’70s, Kris Kristofferson earned a literature degree from Oxford University. After having a novel rejected, he abandoned academic life and tied the knot with his longtime girlfriend Fran Beer in 1960. “We thought we could solve each other’s problems, we, uh, got married, she got pregnant, my novel I’d finished got rejected, and I was suddenly stuck, totally, with the bread-winner role,” Kristofferson told Rolling Stone in 1974.
The couple started their family in 1962 when they welcomed their daughter Tracy, and expanded it six years later with the addition of Kris Jr. To provide for his family, Kristofferson joined the Army, eventually being assigned to West Point as an English teacher in 1965. Before he reported to his new post, Kristofferson visited a friend in Nashville. The Music City reignited Kristofferson’s dream of being a songwriter, a career path he’d tried to pursue for years — albeit unsuccessfully up to that point.
Kristofferson moved his wife and kid to Nashville and started supporting the three of them by working as a janitor at Columbia Records. “I accepted that it was a leap of faith, leaving home to do what I loved,” he told Texas Monthly in 1997. The move and pay cut scared Beer, a situation that became even more tense when Kris Jr. was born with health issues that resulted in $10,000 in medical bills. In 1969, Kristofferson and Beer split up.
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Source: NewsFinale
