Kris Kristofferson was 'a walking contradiction,' a renegade and pilgrim surrounded by friends

LOS ANGELES (AP) — If Kris Kristofferson's life were fiction, it would feel a little implausible.

He was a Texas-born Golden Gloves boxer and star football player, a Rhodes Scholar and a helicopter-flying U.S. Army captain who walked away from a West Point faculty gig to briefly become a janitor on his way to becoming one of the greatest American singer-songwriters of the 20th century.

And, as if just for kicks along the way, he became a devilishly handsome major movie star who could play either a rugged outlaw or a romantic leading man.

Kristofferson, a father of eight children who was married to third wife Lisa Meyers for the last four decades of his life, died at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday at age 88, surrounded by family.