Michael L. Kenney
Michael L. Kenney Obituary
Michael L. Kenney, life-long Bruins fan, passionate golfer, quoter of poetry, music savant, and lover of all things Irish, died peacefully Wednesday surrounded by family and friends at his home in West Roxbury. He was 73.
Mister Kenney was diagnosed with Grade IV glioblastoma in February 2024.
Break-away Mike Kenney, who played hockey at Catholic Memorial High School and later Northfield-Mount Hermon School, grew up in West Roxbury, the son of Charles Kenney, Jr., a Boston Firefighter, and Anne (Barry), a New England Telephone operator and homemaker.
Mike later attended Boston State College for a time but left to work with children with special needs at Camp Joy.
A talented writer and a natural with people, Mike worked as an account executive and a copywriter for Ingalls, Quinn, and Johnson advertising and Hill, Holliday. He later worked for Boston Water & Sewer for 22 years as an inspector.
Mike was the second of six brothers, an “Irish twin” 11 months younger than his older brother, and a character pulled from the set of John Wayne movie The Quiet Man. Tall, broad-shouldered, a gifted athlete, he sported a handlebar mustache that adorned a handsome face, a man best photographed in sepia.
Like his mother, who died when he was 23, Mike had a natural and easy way with people. He also possessed an almost encyclopedic knowledge of sports, film, and music. Good luck trying to best him on the history of Bob Dylan, The Band, Steely Dan, Pat Metheny, Bill Evans. And, if you happened to need directions from, say, West Roxbury to Miami, Florida, Mike could map you a route with places to stop for lunch.
Mister Kenney was a member of a golf league at the George Wright golf course for 50 years, working as the league’s newsletter writer for decades. The Wright was Mike’s sanctuary, this public gem, built by the Roosevelt Administration during the Great Depression and designed by the famed Donald Ross.
His passion for golf was born when he met Francis Ouimet. No athlete held higher honors in Mike’s mind than Ouimet, the great American amateur who stunned the golf world in 1913 when he beat Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in the U.S. Open. As if pulled from a movie script, the Open that year was held at The Country Club in Brookline. The irony of a local boy who lived across the street from the blue-blood bastion, home to the swells who looked down on the Irish, was not lost on Mike, a caddy as a teenager at the Charles River Country Club. In a moment perhaps fated, Mike would later caddy for Ouimet. As Mike recalled, it had started to rain and at the turn, when the other golfers went in to change and eat, Mister Ouimet brought Mike into the clubhouse, told him to sit, and brought him dry towels and a sandwich, this legend, golfing God, waiting on the young boy.
Mike possessed the Boston Irish soul of a man who could down a pint and knock you to the ground, help you up, and shed a tear at King Curtis’s Whiter Shade of Pale.
His life changed when he met Chris Kelly, with whom he would build a life, a home, and raise two remarkable daughters.
Throughout, West Roxbury remained his north star, his always home. The people and history and place. The Boston of Summer Thing and Kevin White, Mary Ann’s Bar in Cleveland Circle and Steve Slyne’s Deli, of Hanley’s Bakery and Parkway Little League. Of the Bruins, always the Bruins. Orr and Esposito, Bourque and Chara, Bergeron and Marchand.
Loyalty and friendship were his currency. Empathy and kindness his yacht. A hundred friends his Swiss Bank Account. He knew, from the start, that you would be measured, in the end, by the friends you kept, by how you treated them, by the lives you touched. He knew that we write our obituary every day.
His greatest joy was his daughters, Audrey and Tara, nurses, like their mother, Chris. Mike was able to see Tara married last summer on Cape Cod, a place that held many memories for him. And to see Audrey and Lang get engaged at St. John, USVI, a place dear to the family.
Mister Kenney is survived by his wife, Chris; his daughter, Audrey and her fiancée, Lang Hoang, of Weymouth and Fort Lauderdale, Florida; daughter Tara and John McDonough of Roslindale; his five brothers, Charles of Jamaica Plain and Delray Beach, Florida; Thomas, who died in 2019; Patrick of Milton; John of Larchmont, NY; and Timothy of West Roxbury. Mike also leaves his sister-in-law Joan Sanz and her husband Joe, both of Miami, Florida, as well as their sons Kevin and Chris, with whom Mike was exceptionally close. As well as sister-in-law Judy Flaherty and her husband Paul and their daughters Jacqueline and Jannine.
After his diagnosis, and for the year that followed, Mike would end almost all phone calls with “Life is good.” He meant it not as cliché or mere throwaway, but as bedrock belief from someone who had seen behind the curtain, who knew what awaited him. He abhorred self-pity, the maudlin, and chose, instead, to find the beauty in the everyday, in the seemingly nothing detail, where it waits for us, always, if only we look.
Mister Kenney did have one regret. He said the prospect of death was coming at an inopportune time, as he felt he had only just perfected his golf swing.
Visiting hours will be held in the Robert J. Lawler and Crosby Funeral Home, 1803 Centre St. West Roxbury, on Monday, February 10, from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated in St. John Chrysostom Church 4750 Washington St. West Roxbury, on Tuesday, February 11, at 10:00 a.m. Relatives and friends are invited to attend. Interment will be private.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to:
Parkway In Motion
P.O. Box 320399
West Roxbury MA 02132