In early 2024, John McBride thought he was battling a routine sore throat. The 59-year-old Rochester native had no idea his world was about to turn upside down. When the lump in his throat didn’t go away, McBride, owner of ROC House Renovations in Gates, visited his doctor. Several tests and biopsies later, he received a diagnosis: tonsil cancer.
“I was driving to a job site with my designer when I got the call,” McBride recalls. “It was scary. I had no idea what was ahead of me.”
There is never a convenient moment to hear the word “cancer,” but for McBride the timing felt particularly cruel. “I had just gotten engaged. The wedding was supposed to be in September.”
What should have been a season of joyful planning quickly turned into months defined by medical appointments and treatments. After surgery to remove his tonsils and 16 lymph nodes, McBride endured five weeks of radiation that summer.
“You lose your sense of taste. You feel exhausted. I lost 41 pounds,” he says. For the first time in 30 years, he had to step back from the business he built. Yet while his body felt fragile, his support system grew stronger.
“Family means everything to me,” says McBride, who has three daughters, two stepdaughters, and seven grandchildren with his wife, Susan. “We’re a big blended family. They stepped up for me during that time with emotional support, physical support, everything I could have needed.”
His community also rallied. Members of Ridgemont Country Club, where McBride has long been a member, surrounded him and his family with moral and financial support. “They surprised me with these orange bracelets with my name on them and handed them out in the community as a show of support.”
McBride also credits his medical team at Wilmot Cancer Institute. “They’re the best in the world,” he says. “It’s hard not to feel like you’re going to beat this when you’re surrounded by that much positivity.”
On Aug. 9, McBride rang the bell at Wilmot to mark his last day of treatment. By November, he was officially declared cancer-free.
Along with a renewed appreciation for life and family, McBride says survival gave him a chance to reevaluate his business. After nearly a year away from work, he decided to rebuild ROC House Renovations from the ground up.
“You have to crack a few eggs to bake a cake,” he says, describing the challenge of finding the right employees and partners. McBride considers his business a family too and wants team members who share his passion for remodeling. “I want people to want to come to work every day because they love what they do.”
A new business partner, Tony DiLullo, has been a game-changer. With 30 years of experience in the building trades, DiLullo personally oversees every element of the remodeling process.
“I’m blessed to have Tony as a partner,” McBride says with pride. Together, the pair decided to keep the company strategically small, taking on no more than three projects at a time. They also downsized to a smaller showroom to keep pricing competitive.
Today, McBride views each day as a gift. “I feel like I got a second chance at life and a second chance at business,” he says. “What I went through was horrible. And it had a great ending.”
“It’s hard not to feel like you’re going to beat this when you’re surrounded by that much positivity.”