WISCONSIN RAPIDS - Life dealt Michael Kinney some body blows, the kind of painful events that are a universal part of the human experience.
There was the divorce, shortly followed by the loss of Kinney's much-loved dog, Sammie the Sheltie, who died at age 13. Then Kinney's father Rich died, a popular musician and music teacher known in the Wisconsin Rapids for his steel guitar playing who guided his son onto a musical pathway as well. Then, as if fate hadn't handed him enough, Kinney's close friend and musical partner, Jeff Gauss, died at age 55 in June 2020 from frontal temporal lobe dementia and Lewy body dementia.