I failed to mention last week that one of my all-time heroes completed yet another trip around the sun. At one point, he had his entire life going for him:
A track & field standout and star player in college football and rugby who was featured in Sports Illustrated.
Graduated with a literature degree and won a Rhodes Scholarship. At Oxford, he continued playing rugby and was a top man of the boxing team.
Eventually, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, completed Ranger School, became a helicopter pilot, and signed up to go to Viet Nam, but was ultimately given assignment as a literature professor at West Point.
Then he quit the Army, moved to Nashville, Tennessee, soon got divorced, and became a janitor at Columbia Recording Studios.
He swept floors for a living.
He recalls that his mother “said that I was an embarrassment to the family.” While the Rhodes Scholarship was certainly a feather in the family cap, his mother said of such accomplishments, “They’ll never measure up to the tremendous disappointment you’ve always been.”
About 7 years ago, the fellow lamented, “Why tell your kid that?”
Perhaps it gave him more determination.
During his time in the Army, he picked up his music career again and started a band. After he left the Army, he had a fuzzy notion that he could “make it” in Music City, U.S.A., at least as a songwriter.
So, he slipped songs to people at Columbia. He even went as far as landing a helicopter — “borrowed” from his job as a commercial pilot in the Louisiana oil industry — in the front yard of Johnny Cash.
It got Cash’s attention, and the fellow won the 1970 Country Music Association award for Songwriter of the Year, thanks to the Man in Black’s version of one of his songs.
Just a few more “disappointments” occurred throughout his life:
1970 CMA Song of the Year (nominated for 2 Singles of the Year)
1971 Grammy for Song of the Year (nominated for another)
1976 Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical
1980 Oscar nomination for Best Original Score
1985 ACM Song of the Year
2003 Veteran of the Year from the American Veterans Awards
2004 Country Music Hall of Fame inductee
2014 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
2019 CMA Lifetime Achievement Award
Appearances and several starring roles in over 90 motion pictures and more than 30 television shows & TV movies.
Numerous Gold records and dozens of charting albums & singles.
Wrote a number of songs that went on to be hits for other artists.
He’s had his ups and downs, but he credits his friends as his biggest blessings.
“I’m thinking of his face when he was dying,” he recalled about the late Merle Haggard. “I had the highest respect for him. Knowing him and Willie and Waylon and Johnny Cash – that’s been one of the biggest blessings in my life.”
Dream big. Never give up on those dreams. Count your blessings.
We do it here every day.
And while we hope your mother never told you what a “tremendous disappointment” you’ve been, it turns out everyone may need a little kick in the fanny to get back on the path to success every once and a while.
We are fanny-kickers.
As always,
Brian
P.S. — Happy Belated 87th Birthday to Kris Kristofferson, a testament to one family’s “embarrassment.”
