Becky Sue Isaac, 68, of Lenexa, Kansas, passed away on Sunday, August 2, 2026. Funeral Services will be 10:30 AM Saturday, August 8, 2026 at the Crossroads Church RCA, 10551 Quivira Rd., Overland Park, Kansas. In lieu of flowers the family suggests memorial contributions to Crossroads Church RCA.
Becky was born September 28, 1957, in Kansas City, KS to Clarence H. and Dolores H. (Giffin) Richards. Becky loved her family deeply and is survived by her husband Chuck, two children Jason Isaac and Helen Kennedy (Michael – spouse) and two adorable grandchildren Adeline (Addie) and Callahan (Cal) and a host of traditional and non-traditional friends she has kept in touch with.
Becky has battled a variety of health issues for the last 30+ years, Despite that battle Becky lived a full life. She was incredibly productive despite many limitations. She was an elite shopper and resource locator. Becky was always finding bargains for her grandchildren and other family members. Whenever we needed help (a new doctor, a repairman, etc.) Becky with her keen skills would search out alternatives and guided the family well.
Becky kept busy with a variety of activities despite being homebound for the last 10+ years. She enjoyed reviewing books, (Christian and Children's books), and sharing her favorite gluten free recipes on her blog (bookreadingtic.com). Faith was very important to Becky, she lived it and her favorite scripture was Psalm 91, which she prayed over her family daily and anytime they were leaving the family home. Becky was an avid scrap book creator and recognized everyone's birthday with an extravagant card decorated with high quality glitter she obtained from her active membership in the “Glitter Club” as well as host of stickers. She loved to play board and card games and relished the opportunities when someone engaged her with a game.
Becky entered heaven’s pearly gates walking freely without pain. Becky always worked hard to make everyone feel special and she is honored by all who are reflecting that love back in memory of her.
Becky’s life story, which was filled with God’s providence begins at birth. Becky’s birth was traumatic. Her mother, Dolores, had placenta previa where the placenta preceded Becky being born. Her Mom experienced this while in the Shower where she had profuse bleeding. This emergency condition happened to occur during a Strike for the local ambulances so no emergency vehicles were available to take her mother to the hospital. Becky’s Aunt Dorris, who worked for the local Kansas City, Kansas government pulled all the strings she could and got an ambulance from the Kansas City, Missouri side to come and take Dolores to the hospital. Of course, when arriving at the hospital no rooms were available. A member of their local church, who was recovering the hospital agreed to check out so the Dolores could have her room. The Doctor told Becky’s Dad, Clarence how serious the situation is. He told Clarence he had to choose who the Doctor should save, Dolores, her mother, or Becky. He didn’t believe he could save both of them. The Specialist Doctor who was doing the delivery honestly didn’t want to take the case because he didn’t want a bad outcome to be on his record. Clarence refused to choose between his wife and new born daughter and told the Doctor he had to try to save both.
Miraculously, the Doctor did save both and Becky was born. Becky was a sickly infant as she had a milk allergy and had a very difficult time keeping milk down and suffered from low weight. To try to help with this milk allergy Clarence would get up at 4AM and go the dairy to get the very freshest milk straight from the dairy so that the “whole” milk would be easier for Becky to digest. This had modest success. Later Becky asked her mother why she hadn’t saved any of her baby clothes and her mother told her that she threw up on the clothes so much that they were all ruined. Another difficult situation that God guided Becky through.
Becky was born into a very close-knit family. On the same street of her parents house her maternal Grandmother, Helen Giffin, and her great-Aunt Hazel lived down the street. On the next block of the same street Becky’s Aunt Dorris (Clarence’s 10-year older sister) lived. The neighborhood had very few kids. The houses were either filled with long time residents or properties that had been converted to rental property. The only kids besides Becky in the neighborhood were Terri and Gary Claypool. Terri was slightly older than Becky and Gary was slightly younger. They were Becky’s primary playmates growing up.
The difficult birth that Dolores experienced made her unable to have other children so Becky was an only child. Being an only child born to parents who were older (30’s) when she was born and living in a neighborhood with few children Becky was often exposed to more adult conversation and was very mature at a young age as a result.
Becky’s Mom, Dolores, was a very high energy person. She kept a spotless house, was an excellent cook, and an accomplished bargain shopper. The kitchen was Dolores’s domain, and despite her excellent skills, most of the time she wouldn’t even allow Becky into the kitchen to observe her putting together the many delicious dishes she made.
Dolores was very driven to get things done and rarely had an idle moment. Becky recounted that if her mom was cleaning the house, which she did extensively daily, she would put Becky outside and lock the doors to keep her out of her way. Becky was told to use the hose if she needed to get a drink. Dolores waxed the floors multiple times every week along with other cleaning.
Becky’s Dad, Clarence was the perfect mate for Dolores as he was a mostly soft spoken and gentle man who was an extremely hard worker and despite only having a high school education, he was very smart. Clarence returned from World War II and bought their family home in downtime KCK and then proceeded to divide into three living sections. He lived in one section, and rented out the other two of this two-story home. When he and Dolores were married, they made one renter move out and ultimately, they reclaimed the entire house for themselves. Clarence worked for the local electric company run by the city, “The Board of Public Utilities”. Working for this entity came along with a requirement that you had to live within the city limits to remain employed there. Because that rule was in effect most of the time, he worked there they never moved from that home.
In the late 60’s Clarence had a terrible accident where he fell off a tall ladder in the power plant landing on his feet and breaking several bones. His recovery took over a year and at that time they didn’t have workers compensation so Clarence had to use up the over a year of sick leave time he had accumulated after years of working there. Things were pretty lean by the time he was finally able to return to work.
Then came the Power Plant he worked at becoming unionized. When it did Clarence got significant back pay which allowed them to extensively remodel and modernize their home as well as replace a very old rickety garage with a brand new significantly larger garage. This also coincided with Dolores inheriting money from her sister, Vernie, who died young.
Becky enjoyed helping her parents pick out new wallpaper, paint colors, and furniture for the massive re-do of their entire home. As an early teen Becky’s Dad taught Becky how to read maps and she became the families primary navigator as that was something her Mom had difficulty with. Long before anyone dreamed of GPS, Becky was a human GPS. She could take you exactly back to the place she had been with you years before. This was an impressive and needed skill because her husband Chuck was very challenged when it came to navigation.
Growing up Becky played the piano. This originated from a wish from her paternal grandparents who had many health problems early in Becky’s life. Her grandparents had purchased some savings bonds as a baby gift for Becky, but didn’t give them to her until she was a little older because given all of her problems keeping food down and low initial growth rate, they didn’t want to give them until they knew for sure she would live. Her grandfather always wanted her to play the piano. Becky started lessons at age 5. She had to demonstrate to the Classic Piano teacher, Mrs. Gibson that she could properly sit on the piano bench and reach the peddles. Becky took piano lessons all the way up to the time she was in high school. She was a good piano player. Much later in life when the church she grew up in decided to close their doors Becky’s parents purchased the Churches baby grand piano. That piano still resides in the Isaac home today.
Becky doesn’t have a lot of memories of her paternal grandparents as they were older when she was born. Her grandmother soon contracted Alzheimer’s disease and her grandfather soon had cancer. They both passed away when Becky was young.
Becky’s teenage years were difficult because being the youngest child in an older family many family members were passing away. During that time Becky’s maternal grandfather passed away. A tragic bought of cancer took Becky’s uncle. His wife, Becky’s Aunt Vernie had been healthy and shortly after her husband’s death she contracted brain cancer and passed away suddenly. Added to that during that time was the death of her cousin, Kenny in the Vietnam War.
The family had a cloud of sadness over it from literally one tragedy after another. Becky longed to go outside of this sad time in their life and took advantage of high school friends (often her dates) to take her out of the house and do activities where the harsh realities of this difficult time could be put aside for a while.
Becky was an excellent student, but didn’t necessarily look at herself that way. At that time schools assessed what “track” a student should be in and had more advanced and less advanced coursework. Students were placed based upon that assessment. Becky was always in the “high” track. She said she didn’t understand at the time why all of her books were 2 – 3 times the thickness of the books of her friends and none of her friends were in her classes. Becky was born in the height of the “baby boom” so her high school, “Wyandotte High School” in Kansas City, Kansas (KCK) had a large and over crowded population. During her time in high school other schools were opened by her junior year and many of her friends were placed in the new schools. Losing a lot of her friends Becky opted to take advantage of a new program her senior year where she would go to school for just an hour and then go the KCK Junior college for a program designed to teach a trade. She was learning the accounting and bookkeeping trade. She excelled at that. One of the opportunities that grew out of that was at the end of her training the college hooked her up with a head hunter who helped place her in a job post-graduation. This placement came with a commitment to work for a certain period of time as an obligation for being placed. If you didn’t work the time (about 2 years) then you had to pay the significant head hunter fee that otherwise was paid by the company. Because of this Becky didn’t go straight from high school to college like she really wanted to. She didn’t even dream of not keeping her commitment because she didn’t want to ask her parents to have to cover the head hunter fee. This resulted in Becky taking several years post high school working and she went to school at night. When you are trying to earn your entire degree this way it takes a long time.
During the time Becky was working and taking 3 or more classes each semester, she was also teaching 1st and 2nd grade Sunday school classes at church and was involved in leading the Church Youth Group. Like her parents Becky rarely had an idle moment in her personal life. Becky followed this incredibly busy schedule for several years. She changed jobs periodically beginning with a job at a big mail order pharmacy. She then transitioned to supposed part time work at Hallmark’s credit department as well as Pepsi. There was some time when she was working part time at both and putting in 30 more hours a week at each. Of course, she was still going to school and had her same church duties. She finally shed these two supposed part time jobs, which didn’t come with benefits, for a full-time job at the industrial HVAC company, Marley. She worked in the corporate office in the accounting department. She still was working to get paid her true worth and that eventually led to a transfer to a “new” division outside of the corporate office which was part of a new company Marely acquired and was incorporating into their operation. The merger was a nightmare. The folks they hired to run it were not very good, and Becky was literally working 60 – 80 hours a week and despite that little progress was made on the many problems caused by a poor transition plan. Becky had, had enough and really wanted to just finish her degree. By this time all of those night classes had gotten Becky through two full years of a four-year degree. She decided to leave work and go to college full time to finish her degree. She was encouraged by an elder in her church to go the William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. William Jewell is a small Christian college which at that time was jointly supported by both the American and Southern Baptist churches. Becky entered William Jewell as an advanced Junior and that is where she met Chuck who was a senior. The church elder, George Shanklin had told Becky that she wasn’t just to go up to the college (she was commuting at the time) take classes and just come home. She had to get involved in the college life there. In one of her first classes the professor was encouraging students to volunteer to work at the campus radio station. Chuck, who was a Communication Major, planning on going into Radio and Television was one of the student leaders of the campus station. During the station’s recruiting drive Chuck met Becky for the first time. This was not a “love at first sight” story. Becky had come to William Jewell as a non-traditional student and had little interest in meeting a love interest. The first interaction she remembers with Chuck is that when she was eating one of the cupcakes served as refreshment during the recruiting section, she had only taken a bite out of the cupcake and wasn’t finishing it (at least not fast like Chuck would have done). Chuck asked he if she was going to finish that cupcake and thinking he was a poor hungry college student she gave it to him amazed that he would finish eating a cupcake someone else took a bite out of.
Becky volunteering at the radio station ultimately led to her having an afternoon on air talk show with Chuck and another student. As they worked together more and did activities together their very platonic relationship ultimately turned into a romantic relationship. Becky was amazed at this because initially Chuck had showed no interest so when he actually did have interest she was surprised. What she didn’t know is the fact that she did so much with Chuck and was so easy to get along with Chuck ultimately saw this as a very attractive quality and changed how Chuck thought of Becky.
Since Chuck was a senior and Becky a junior Chuck was planning for post college life. Since Chuck wanted to go into broadcasting and that was a hard field to break into. Chuck was considering graduate school at Syracuse University in New York (a famous broadcasting school). Ultimately Chuck became serious about his relationship with Becky and didn’t want to move away from her. One of Becky’s good friend’s sisters told Becky AT&T was hiring in Kansas City for Customer Service representatives for a new call center they were opening. Becky had tried for years to get on at the telephone company as a “Service Representative”. Her family had a history of working there. Her mother worked at AT&T prior to getting married to Clarence and only left there when he had to when she was pregnant with Becky. Her Mom’s sister, Becky’s Aunt Vernie had worked at Southwestern Bell as a Service Rep for many years. After finding out about this opportunity both Becky and Chuck applied for this job. The AT&T personal office put both Becky and Chuck through a battery of tests and assessments to determine their fitness for the position. Becky’s Mom answered the phone and it was an old colleague from Dolores’s days at AT&T. She had recognized the address on Becky’s application and called to confirm that Becky was Dolores’s daughter. Upon confirmation she asked Becky to come in for an interview. Becky asked her mom to inquire if they could pull Chuck’s application and he could interview too. The friend complied and both Becky and Chuck interviewed for the position and both were hired.
Because Chuck had finished his degree, he was given a little more weight than Becky. They both entered the new call center. Chuck was blessed with being assigned to a seasoned manager who had years of experience working in this call center environment. Becky on the other hand was assigned a brand-new supervisor, who lacked the knowledge of how to do the job. Additionally, the “customer service” job they applied for was really a “sales” job were the representatives handled the customer’s service complaint so that they could get to the real objective which was selling an AT&T product to that customer. That aspect didn’t bother Chuck, but sales was never something that Becky wanted to do. After knuckling through what became a job she hated, Becky made the decision after the summer (first three months of working) that she would resign from the job and return to school full time to finish her degree. William Jewell had a significant foreign language requirement which meant Becky couldn’t have finished her degree in one year. She ended up transferring to St. Mary’s College in Leavenworth, KS where she could finish her degree in Psychology in one year. Chuck excelled at AT&T and seven months into his tenure there he was given a temporary promotion to help open a new office in Parsippany, New Jersey (right outside of New York City). At that time, he and Becky were very involved with each other, but not engaged. This was the first time that Becky and Chuck had been separated. The “temporary, try it before you buy it” promotion Chuck received came with the ability for Chuck to return to KC every two weeks or Becky could fly (on AT&T) to New Jersey to visit Chuck. The distance encouraged Chuck to ask Becky to marry him. Chuck was actually very unhappy with the position because despite the 100% increase in pay Chuck received the high cost of living of the East Coast made Chuck have about 40% less purchasing power than he had in the lesser position in Kansas City. Chuck had been promoted with two other individuals from Kansas City. All of them were unhappy and didn’t want to remain in New Jersey after they successfully passed their trial period. A higher-level manager from Kansas City came to visit them and encouraged them to return to KC if they weren’t happy and he would find other opportunities for them back home. Chuck couldn’t wait to go back to KC. Chuck later found out that the manager was not honest and was encouraging folks to leave so his daughter could take their place.
Chuck was blessed with a great manager who helped get a non-management transfer from residential customer service to small business sales. Upon returning to Kansas City Chuck and Becky ultimately got married in less than a year after Chuck returned. They moved into the old house of Becky’s Great Aunt Hazel, who Becky’s parents had helped Becky purchase before she met Chuck. This was a small two-bedroom house, but Becky, with a really good sense of decorating had made it really nice on the inside. It didn’t have a good lot. It had many stairs to come up from the street in the front and a few stairs to come in the alley from the back. Chuck & Becky’s first child, Jason was born a few years after Chuck returned and this was his first home. Becky hadn’t been around kids growing up as there were few in her neighborhood so she didn’t babysit and hadn’t really taken care of babies. Chuck had a sister and an eleven-year younger brother so he did have some experience taking care of small children. Becky was initially nervous about becoming a mother, but no one would have ever known as she took to mothering like a champ and did great with Jason. This was despite the fact that Jason also had a bad milk allergy (somewhat similar to Becky as a child, but it manifested differently). It made Jason extremely fussy and he never slept more than two hours at a time and not more than 5 hours per day. Having not been around babies Becky didn’t know how not normal this was. When she asked the HMO doctor, we had about it she was told “well babies cry”. We didn’t discover until Jason was 5 that he had a milk allergy and this was the source of the problem. Needless to say, being a full-time mother to such a handful of a baby was taxing, but Becky handled it like a champ while taking care of the rest the house, cooking, laundry, etc.
Chuck continued to progress at work an ultimately got an opportunity to move into Mid Business Sales which was a management position at a better salary. This along with some significant help from Becky’s parents allowed them to move from downtown Kansas City, KS to Merriam, KS in 1991. (We moved in and celebrated Jason’s 2nd birthday there). Becky’s current grandson Cal would have appreciated his Uncle Jason’s Kitty Cat themed Second birthday party as Cal loves cats like Jason did.
Becky enjoyed a nicer home in Merriam and was a great mother to Jason. Becky did lots of gardening and enjoyed crafts in addition to taking care of our home, corking, laundry, etc. She got involved with some mother’s groups so that there were activities for Jason to participate in. The neighborhood we moved to had other kids Jason’s age who lived in adjacent homes and Jason and those boys and girls played together regularly. The Merriam home featured a nice finished basement which became Jason’s play area.
Unfortunately, Becky began to have some health problems within a couple years of us moving to the Merriam home. It took us a year to figure out that the health problems (constant sinus infections and congestion and even multiple bouts of pneumonia) were caused by Becky having been bitten by a Lyme tick during a family trip we took to the Northeast (Vermont) to view the beautiful fall leaves. Since we didn’t realize this for a couple of years or more after it happened it caused many problems for Becky and she started to develop allergies she had never had before in addition to constant infections. During that time, we charted that she had taken over 30 rounds of antibiotics per year. We visited many doctors. We got rid of pets (dogs and cats), furniture they had touched and made many more life style and dietary changes trying to alleviate the effects on Becky. Most of the changes we made had only minimal effect.
Becky continued to struggle with her health, but like her hard-working tough family she motored through it and tried to do normal things despite all of her challenges. Chuck continued to do better at his job at AT&T and ultimately got offered a job to move from Sales into Product Management. This came with the ability to move his office close to home and ultimately to home in 1995. Within a couple years of Chuck making his office at home, Helen was born in late 1996. Because of Becky’s health issues it was difficult for Becky to fully care for Helen, but Helen was a much different baby than Jason. Helen actually had milk allergy issues too, but because of our experience with Jason, we immediately switched her to non-dairy formula and she was an easy baby, especially compared to Jason. She almost immediately slept for 7, 8, 9 hours at a time or more. Because this was so different than Jason Becky asked the doctor if there was something wrong with Helen. The doctor helped us realize Helen’s behavior was normal and the experience with Jason was the abnormal one.
Helen was a very mature little girl. She was always in a hurry to grow up. Becky recounted a time when our home phone rang and 3 year old Helen maturely answered the phone. When asked if Chuck was available she politely and professionally said I’m sorry he’s working now and not available, but can I take a message for him?” We continued to search for answers to help Becky’s health. During one trip out of town Becky noticed she felt significantly better. While we were out of town there was a TV special talking about mold in homes and the devasting effect that had on health. We had several friends tell us about the program. We researched it and it led to us paying someone from St. Louis to come test our home to see if we had a mold problem. The result was yes and it was really bad and dangerous. That led us to find an apartment to do a temporary move to see if health improved. When it did, Becky would never return to our house again. We ultimately bought our current house in Lenexa and then paid double house payments for almost two years until we could finally sell our house with mold in it. We had fully disclosed its problems, talked several people who wanted to buy our house out of it because they also had allergies, but ultimately sold it at a deeply discounted price.
We started to move items from the old house to the new one and realized we were bringing some of the mold with us. That led us to shedding most of our former belongings and having to extensively clean the items we were bringing to the new house with mold killer. The new house we bought was a two story house with an extra bedroom. Becky wanted all of our bedrooms to be on the same level so we were on the same level as the kids. Unfortunately, within just two months of moving to our new home in June, 2000 Becky started to develop problems with her legs and navigating the stairs became very difficult. It took us a few years to find out that was caused by her having lymphoedema which caused significant fluid retention, especially in her legs and arms and made it extremely difficult and painful to walk. While Becky was battling this new ailment, she was still battling the effects of Lyme disease and the harm from the dangerous mold exposure. There was a three-year period where Becky had to take weekly intravenous antibiotics to tackle the Lyme disease. Additional allergies continued to develop further restricting the foods Becky could eat.
The lymphodema was progressive and Becky’s mobility continued to decline. She ultimately had to start being transported in a wheel chair. We had a lift chair installed in our home to allow her to get from the main floor to our bedroom on the second floor. Unfortunately, Becky found the lift chair uncomfortable, difficult, and painful to use so even though she did use it as her problem worsened it was harder and harder for her to use the lift chair to go up and down the stairs.
It took us a long time to get the lymphoedema diagnosed for Becky and the treatment was pumping her legs and wrapping them with compression bandages. Unfortunately, the early lymphoedema pumps caused more harm than good and pushed the problem above her knees into her thighs and abdomen causing further decreases in mobility.
This lymphoedema also restricted the flow of lymphatic fluids and caused a build up and inflammation. Becky had been given some medication to help keep the fluid retention down, but the doctor gave such a high dose that Becky couldn’t tolerate it. She complained about it to the doctor and rather than just decreasing the dose to a more tolerable level the doctor stopped the medication altogether. This led to a fluid build up in her entire body including her lungs and produced a life-threatening situation where she was basically drowning internally and her bodies oxygen saturation rate which should be 90% dropped to 35% and she was losing consciousness. This led to a three month stay in intensive care followed by a month in a care facility. Becky had survived despite the doctor’s initial prediction she either wouldn’t or would be a vegetable if she did. This was 10 years ago. Becky came home, but she was bed bound. We quickly determined she needed outside therapy help. For 1 ½ years Chuck lifted Becky out of her bed with a Hoyer lift into her wheel chair and used medical transport to take her to therapy. With a good therapist and God’s providence Becky was able to stand and walk a limited amount after this therapy. She was able to ditch the hospital bed in be in a lift chair were she then spent all her time, but was able to walk back and forth with a walker to the bathroom.
During all this time that Becky was battling all of these health conditions she didn’t stop living her life. We continued to take trips with the wheel chair and other handicapped equipment. She did scrapbooking extensively and impressively. She became an internet wizard and could seek out the best deals. She became a Christian book reviewer and had a blog where she published her reviews (bookreadingtic.com). When grandchildren entered the picture, she also reviewed Children’s books to have cool books to share with our grandchildren.
Becky always kept her faith and was always hopeful God would provide physically healing for her. He didn’t choose to do that in her later life, but we rejoice she’s in heaven pain free now.
Becky cared for others. When her mother passed away Becky became friends with several people her mom had interacted with and did several things to help them such as buying a lift chair for a friend who developed mobility issues. She would have meals created for friends or help them stock up on groceries they had a hard time getting or affording themselves.
Becky always remembered everyone’s birthday. She “glitterized” the cards decorating both the cards and envelopes with multiple stickers. She was a member of the “Glitter Club”, a company that produced super fine glitter in many different colors and varieties and had contests for its members from time to time that Becky participated in.
Becky was a gift giver and along with that wrapped the most beautiful packages you have ever seen making her own homemade bows out of a variety of ribbons she kept on hand.
Becky’s favorite verse was Psalm 91. She would pray that over all our family daily and pray that as we came and went from the family home.
God has blessed us by having Becky in our lives. We celebrate her induction into heaven where she no longer feels pain. As her granddaughter Addie described, MiMi still has a chair in heaven, but now she’s healed and she can walk back to the chair with no problem.
Addie asked, “Do you think MiMi will hear me if I pray and tell Jesus I miss her? Yes, Addie we do. We all miss her, but look forward to one day re-uniting with her in heaven.
Thank you, God, for making it possible for us to share Heaven with you and have hope when we leave this earth that we have a better place to go. A place where we can be reunited with people we love like Becky.