Reynolds went on the Duke University, where he earned his master of arts degree in history in 1963 and his Ph.D. in 1964 under Professor Theodore Ropp.

Reynolds began his career as an instructor, and later an associate professor, in the Department of English, History, and Government at the U.S.

He served briefly as visiting professor at Mississippi State University in the autumn of 1979, but for most of the decade between 1978 and 1988, he was an independent scholar, working as the part-time curator and historian at the Patriot's Point Naval and Maritime Museum in Charleston, South Carolina.

Dr. Reynolds also published fifty-seven journal articles in his field and contributed to a number of encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries.

[2] In 1963, Reynolds married Constance A. Caine of Garden City, New York, a Phi Beta Kappa student in Political Science at Duke University, with whom he had two sons and a daughter and who served throughout his career as his valued researcher, proof reader, and typist.