As Told By Her Husband Tripp Roakes
Grace McKay Roakes was born in 1965 in Brooklyn, NY as the fifth and final child to Jim (Chief) and Catherine “Kay Ann” McKay. Grace, along with her siblings, Jim, Kathleen, Kevin and Peggy lived a very normal 1970’s style life in Wantagh, NY. After all of her siblings had reached adulthood, Grace’s parents decided it was time to get away from NY and chose Matthews, NC to finish out Grace’s childhood. Grace was 14 at the time of the move. She was always fond of saying her father spun a globe and his finger landed on Matthews. Upon moving, Grace’s parents enrolled her into Charlotte Latin School where she met a special friends, Lisa. Grace would go on to a lifetime friendship with Lisa and finished her work career by spending the last 15 years of her life with Lisa at Cygnus Asset Management.
Grace and I met on August 14, 2000 by way of mutual friends Mike and Katie McLaughlin along with Katie’s sisters, Jill and Jenny. We were married September 15, 2001, just four days after the 9/11 attacks. Our special family came together quickly and I fell so in love with her beautiful children, Hannah and Will. I tried my very best to share every ounce of love I had with them. On May 7, 2003, Grace gave birth to our youngest child, Tyler who would grow up to adore his Mom and brother and sister.
Grace’s pride and joy were always her lovely children; Hannah, William and Tyler. They were the true spice of her life and there was nothing she would not do or spend to give them their best chance in life.
Hannah, 31, grew up and turned into the splitting image of Grace. They held a unique bond and many say today that Hannah has become the shining light of Grace with her kindness and friendship and support of everyone in her life. William, 27, kept his mother as the apple of his eye. Grace was always the rock William needed to build his foundation in life. While William could drive us all a little silly sometimes, he also had the ability to grab his mother’s heart and know that she would do all she could to show him how deep her love was. Tyler, 20 was Grace’s little baby, she referred to him at times as “Baby T” and “T-Mac” a reference to his first and middle names, Tyler McKay. Grace loved going to Tyler’s baseball games from age 4 forward. For many years, Tyler would play over 100 games a year and Grace was almost always there to support him. Tyler’s life on the baseball field, led to many of the best friendships Grace had in life.
You see, to Grace, it was all about family, friends and the support she gave to everyone. Grace had a way of creating a friendship with everyone and was always the kindest person in the room or at the ballfield.
To truly understand Grace’s Story, unfortunately we must share the story of the terrible disease that ultimately took her life on March 26, 2023. During the month of June 2021, Grace began experiencing numbness in her left hand. During dinner with one of her very best baseball friends, Tami, Grace asked Tami to look at her hand since Tami is a Physical Therapist. They talked about a few things, but never in million years did the thought come about of the reality that July 6th would bring. With her hand still tingling, Grace called her doctor who told her to go to the Emergency Room right away to make sure she was not having a stroke. Within 30 minutes, Grace and Tripp were inside the Emergency Room at Atrium Medical Center in downtown Charlotte. In the span of the next few hours, Grace would learn she had a brain tumor and that surgery to remove it would be in the next 48 hours. Looking back on that day, the time moved so fast, we never had the chance to digest the news and the thought never crossed our mind of what we would learn a few days later.
After a successful operation, we held onto the doctor’s words of, “We believe we got it all.” Our line of thinking at that point was, maybe we are going to be ok. That thought was blown up a few days later when we learned Grace’s tumor was a Glioblastoma Tumor in the brain and the absolute worst type of one of those you could have. In reality, you do not beat this type of tumor as it is always growing. Most patients survive less than a year after diagnosis.
Well, if you know us, we don’t like to just quit and not try to win each game. We really didn’t listen to the doctors and just set out to find what might be the best treatment for Grace. Many recommendations came in for us to go to Duke Medical Center for a trial that they had underway for this disease. We looked at Duke as the hope we needed. Duke was known for being on the cutting edge of medical research, so for sure they would give us a chance, right?
If you want to hear something that will crush you down to your core, let a doctor tell you there is nothing else they can do. Well, we didn’t listen to that and simply accept it. We came back home to Charlotte and went to a new and wonderful doctor, Ashley Summrall. We had never met a more personable doctor with better bedside manners than Ashley. She had something she wanted to try and felt like it might could work to reduce the tumors for up to a year for Grace. Low and behold, the next scan was “beautiful”, Grace’s tumors had shrunk to the point of hardly being able to see them. This treatment would continue and would give Grace more time to experience a few important things for her life. She was able to see Tyler graduate from high school and nearly win an American Legion State Baseball Championship. She was able to watch Hannah and our Son-In-Law Brendan make it through their first year of marriage and she watched Will take on a new job in Charleston, SC. Grace and Tripp took advantage of the health improvement to fulfill a dream of owning a house in Oak Island, NC. The next 6 months of life were really good for Grace and we are so thankful to Dr. Summrall for helping to make that happen.
Near the end of December, Grace certainly began to take a turn for the worse. Memory issues were expanding and her balance began to deteriorate. A couple of falls led to an injured arm and shoulder that would never heal. Two doctor appointments and an MRI in early January made it clear that Grace’s time here on earth was coming close to ending. Grace made the very difficult decision to cease treatments that we knew were not going to bring her old life back. Not knowing exactly what we were facing, the initial prognosis was Grace may have two days – two weeks to live. This was such hard news to hear, it still feels like a dream, a very bad dream. Somehow, over the next two weeks, there was no real change for Grace and we decided to just take each day one day at a time. January turned into February which turned into March. While we were seeing small declines, a lot more sleep and more memory loss, we still did not see death as being days away.
Mid-March quickly brought more change though and we knew it would be tough to get to April. Up until the last week of her life, Grace was still able to have conversations and enjoy her children. On Sunday March 19th, Grace began to sleep a lot more, other symptoms began to set in and slowly but surely those single hours of being awake were gone. The last three days of her life were very tough and unfair in so many ways. Of all people, why did this kind, loving soul have to go out like this?
On the morning of March 26th at 8:45am, I was sitting at the kitchen table, staring outside when all of a sudden I saw a Mom and Dad cardinal come to our birdfeeder, and along with them were their three baby birds. How can this be possible? I knew this had meaning and went to round up the children. At 9:22am , my beautiful wife and my children’s incredible mother took her last breath and went to see the Lord.
We believe it’s very important to assist in funding of research to find a cure to this dreaded disease. Very little progress has been made with this type of cancer and we believe its important to provide hope for a cure for others. We believe it’s also important to provide lasting memories of Grace’s name and legacy in places that were important to her. We want others to know that regardless of the diagnosis, you can live your life as positive as Grace did until the very end. Grace was a shining light and we refuse to let that light flicker away.
On behalf of my children, we thank each and everyone of you that provided love, prayers, meals, friendship and support to us from July 6, 2021 until March 26 2023 and up to present day. While this has been a horrible period of life, we must all look ahead and do our very best going forward. I hope you will join us when we are given a chance to reach our fundraising and legacy goals.
2025 Update
Hannah continues to be a direct shining light of her mother. She is the best friend anyone can ever ask for , just like Grace was. Hannah and Brendan live in Raleigh and both are doing incredibly well in their professions. They stay very active with events and weddings with friends and continue to pursue their passion of traveling.
William is our final family member still in Charlotte. He just began a new job and remains a good friend to everyone in his group. Will also loves to travel and recently took a big skiing trip out west!
Tyler is in his first year at East Carolina University, following in the footsteps of his Dad and sister as a Pirate! He continues to pursue his passion of baseball as a member of the nationally ranked ECU Club Baseball Team and will play in a collegiate summer league this summer in Pineville.
Tripp relocated full time to Oak Island in August 2024 to the house he and Grace purchased in September 2022. He has recently caught the Pickleball bug and plays every day. He continues to operate South Charlotte Sports and makes frequent trips back to Charlotte.