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3 members of same Ohio family die of COVID-19

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A single Grove City household lost three of its own to COVID-19 in the span of days.

ABC’s World News Tonight carried the story on April 2, 2020, of a central Ohio family gutted by the coronavirus outbreak. Kelly Conkey Billups buried her father, her mother and her brother within roughly 72 hours, a loss that landed as the national death toll climbed past 5,700 and New York State alone approached 100,000 confirmed infections.

• Kelly Conkey Billups lost her parents, Lewis “Lou” Conkey, 77, and Judith “Judy” Conkey, 75, along with her brother David Conkey, 51.
• Lou and Judy Conkey both died on March 31, 2020, at Mount Carmel Grove City Hospital after testing positive for COVID-19.
• Their deaths came just two days after David’s death, meaning father and son died roughly 48 hours apart.

A Family Wiped Out in Days

The Conkey family, of Grove City, Ohio, went from a household of relatives checking on each other to three funerals inside a single week. Lou and Judy Conkey were admitted to Mount Carmel Grove City Hospital and died there on March 31, both confirmed positive for the virus. David Conkey, their 51-year-old son, had died just two days earlier, putting his death and his father’s within 48 hours of one another.

Kelly Conkey Billups, the surviving daughter and sister, described watching the illness move through her family with almost no warning. She spoke publicly through local broadcast interviews carried by ABC and regional affiliates, detailing the speed with which symptoms escalated and the isolation of hospital quarantine rules that kept relatives from being at bedsides.

Billups said the virus can devastate an entire household in days, and urged the public not to underestimate how fast it moves once it takes hold.

The National Numbers Behind One Local Tragedy

ABC framed the Conkey family’s loss against a country still climbing toward its first major peak. The U.S. death toll had surpassed 5,700 by the time the segment aired, and New York State’s case count alone was nearing 100,000 — a scale that made a single Ohio family’s story a stand-in for what was happening in households nationwide. That same week, coverage of projections showing a sharp jump in the national death toll underscored why officials were pleading with Americans to stay home.

Hospitals like Mount Carmel Grove City were absorbing patients faster than families could process what was happening to them. The Conkeys’ experience — two parents and an adult son gone within a matter of days — became one of the clearest illustrations yet that the virus wasn’t selective about age or health status once it reached a household.

A Warning From Inside the Loss

Billups used her platform to push a direct message: take stay-at-home orders and social distancing seriously, because the disease strikes without warning. Her account echoed what public health officials were saying as more workplaces, including the White House itself moved toward stricter mask and distancing protocols after staff members tested positive.

She described the cruelty of quarantine rules that separated her from her parents and brother in their final days, unable to be physically present as their conditions worsened. It was a detail that resonated nationally precisely because it wasn’t unique to her family — hospitals across the country were enforcing the same isolation protocols for the same reason.

Grove City’s Mount Carmel hospital system, like facilities across Ohio, was bracing for more cases as the state’s stay-at-home order stretched into its third week. For the Conkey family, the numbers were no longer projections on a chart — they were three names, two of them a father and son who died less than two days apart.