Stop Apache gracefully

Yes.

apachectl -k graceful-stop

https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/stopping.html

Use apachectl -k graceful-stop from here:

The WINCH or graceful-stop signal causes the parent process to advise the children to exit after their current request (or to exit immediately if they're not serving anything). The parent will then remove its PidFile and cease listening on all ports. The parent will continue to run, and monitor children which are handling requests. Once all children have finalised and exited or the timeout specified by the GracefulShutdownTimeout has been reached, the parent will also exit.

Keep in mind that sys-v init used to do graceful stop by default and had force-stop as an extra option. A “special” option to gracefully stop is only needed if you run a custom process manager that normally kills processes.