John Clevenger

John Clevenger, the president and CEO of Commerce Bank in Wichita and a member of one of the most prominent banking families in Kansas, died Saturday morning Juy 22 2017. He was 49. Clevenger was 29 when he was named president of Commerce in 1997. Commerce was the third-largest bank in Wichita at the time. A fifth-generation banker, Clevenger initially had no interest in joining the family business. He majored in English at Princeton, where he played football for four years. He tried to go into real estate and “wrote a zillion letters” after graduating from Princeton, he said in a 1997 Wichita Eagle story. He embarked on a different career path, landing a job as a commercial lender for Commerce Bancshares in St. Louis. Three years later, he returned to school and earned a master’s in business administration from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern. John Clevenger’s grandfather, Charles, was president of Fourth Financial Bank in Wichita before moving to Topeka, where he ran the First National Bank. Thomas Clevenger, Charles’ son and John’s father, later took over management of First National Bank. Clevenger and his wife, Kristen, have three children.