Michael Reynolds attended Wake Forest College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he was a member of the college boxing team and a welterweight Golden Gloves champion. He then attended Southwest Seminary at Fort Worth, Texas, and was ordained a Baptist minister. During World War II he was commissioned a U.S. Army chaplain and served in combat with the 24th Infantry Division. He remained in military service after the war, serving in the Korean War, where he earned a Silver Star. Upon his return home, he was assigned as a chaplain to the Tennessee Military District, and traveled the state extensively to recruit chaplains and to advise local ministers how they could support men and women in service. After retiring from miliary service as a lieutenant colonel, he served as pastor of Pauline Baptist Church in Johnson County, North Carolina, and was a school teacher at Benson Elementary School at the time of his death in 1970.