HE STOLE CARS AT 16, WASHED DISHES IN NASHVILLE AT 22, SOLD 25 MILLION RECORDS BY 40 — THEN A STROKE STOLE THE ONLY THING HE EVER TRULY OWNED: HIS VOICE. Randy Travis should have gone to prison. A North Carolina judge gave the teenage delinquent one last chance — hand him over to a woman named Lib Hatcher who believed his voice was worth more than his rap sheet. She was right. He became the man who dragged country music back from the edge of pop extinction, selling 25 million records with a baritone so deep it sounded like God clearing His throat. Then in 2013, a massive stroke nearly killed him. Doctors said he might never walk again. Speaking seemed impossible. Singing was out of the question. But three years later, he stood at the Country Music Hall of Fame podium — frail, shaking, barely able to form words — and sang a hymn so slowly and so bravely that the entire room collapsed into tears. He once recorded a song about four strangers on a bus and the faith that outlives everything. Nobody knew he was writing his own future.
Randy Travis Lost Everything But the Song That Refused to Leave Him At 16, Randy Travis was headed nowhere good. In Marshville, North Carolina, Randy Travis spent more time in…