LINN, Mo. - Two years ago, Osage County-based Legends Bank bought the assets of Home Savings Bank - the last of Jefferson City's early savings and loan institutions.
It was Legends' second facility in Cole County - coming about 19 years after the bank had acquired Heritage Bank and its facilities in Taos and Loose Creek.
And, for nearly two decades, that growth has been overseen by John A. Klebba, now 61, who has been Legends' president, and the third generation of his family to head the bank that started in 1913 as the Rich Fountain Bank.
"My grandfather (John B. Klebba) co-founded the bank," he recalled last week during an interview.
In addition to running his family-owned bank, Klebba has been active in other areas, including serving on St. Mary's Hospital's Foundation Board for "20-plus years," and the State Technical College Board of Regents, where he was just re-elected last month as the board's president.
"They have missions that are critical, I think," he said. "It's just part of being involved in the community, and trying to make this place be as good a place as you can."
Klebba was on the Osage County R-2 School Board's committee that helped steer the two-year technical college into the state's control in the early 1990s, when what began as Linn Technical Junior College grew too big for one local school district to handle.
"We as a bank have been involved with the college since its very inception," he said, when then-Linn R-2 Superintendent Thurman Willett "against incredible odds" conceived of and started, a technical education program for the district's graduates who weren't headed to four-year colleges.
"So it was a really easy decision to get involved, when it became a part of the state (in 1995), and I got asked to serve as one of the members of the original board," Klebba said. "Those first several years, it was a huge time commitment."
Unrelated to State Tech, Klebba's name is also on a major 2012 Missouri Supreme Court case that overturned a 2010 campaign finance law approved by the General Assembly.
The law ultimately included a provision that prohibited state-chartered banks, like Legends, from giving to political action committees when other entities and individuals could make those donations.
Missouri bankers were looking for someone to challenge the law, and Klebba and Legends Bank stepped up.
"As long as everybody's playing on the same field, I can live with that," he explained. "But when you separate out what I can do as a financial institution, and it's less than what a corporation or other individual can do, then we're not on the same field anymore."
The lawsuit also argued the bill as finally passed violated the Missouri Constitution's requirement that a bill contain only one subject.
The courts agreed with the bank's positions and blocked the campaign finance changes that had been in the law.
Klebba said that fight was part of his larger philosophy.
"I'm a 'free-market' guy," he said. "I think competition is good, and I think the fewer restrictions that you put on businesses, the better off you are."
He doesn't object to competition.
"Almost every bank in central Missouri is very well run, so they do well," Klebba said.
If they don't do well, they go out of business, and the banking regulators help find another company that will take over those operations.
Klebba's father, John H. Klebba - who was 75 when he died in February 2004 - started working at the bank, then-known as Linn State Bank, in 1950, when he was 22, and served as president or CEO for 35 years before his death.
Like his father did 20 years ago, Klebba has started a transition process where his brother, Thomas Klebba, will take over as president while he continues as CEO and as general counsel.
He wants people to be assured the bank will continue smoothly, as it did in the previous transitions from one John Klebba to another.
"Fundamentally, the banking industry has not changed. It's always been about providing financial services for people, and doing that in a way that they trust you," he explained last week.
"So, if you're able to do it, I think, in the right way - such that people will trust the advice that you give them - people will stay with you."
However, he added: "The way you go about that has changed dramatically. Technology continues to change almost daily, it seems like.
"I don't care how big, or how small, you are - if you don't keep up with technology in this industry, you're going to suffer."
Today's banking technology includes using smart phones to check account balances, create transfers and, at many institutions, make deposits.
"Those kind of things used to be nice add-ons and now they're not," Klebba said. "Now they're necessary aspects of the banking business."
With increased technology use goes increasing attention to security to make sure customers' financial records aren't compromised.
"It's a daily fight," Klebba said. "It's a fight that's at the very, very top of the priority list for not only our fine institution, but for financial institutions everywhere."
One of the biggest changes in banking, Klebba said, "has been a tremendous consolidation within the industry. The small, community banks are becoming fewer and fewer.
"At this point, we're losing a community bank pretty much every business day in this country."
Many of those facilities merged with other banks.
"We're the beneficiary of some of those," Klebba noted, including the Heritage Bank deal in 1997 and the Owensville-based Charter 1 Bank in 2003.
However, federal law changes - especially after the 2008 Recession - made things more difficult for small banks, he said.
Klebba earned a master's degree in business as well as a law license in a four-year program at Notre Dame University, then worked about eight years with two different Kansas City-based law firms.
His adult career has been spent in the banking industry, or helping it with legal work.
"We really liked Kansas City," he recalled. "I liked the (law) practice."
He got married in 1986, and was doing a lot of work-related travel as the family started growing.
"Then an opportunity became available at the bank (in Linn), and it was one of those really hard decisions - life-changing type of decisions," Klebba recalled. "(Lisa) is from a small town in Kansas and I was, obviously, from here.
"And when kids started arriving, we just kind of made the decision (that) it was healthier to raise kids in small towns than it was in Kansas City, or any city."
So Klebba and his family moved back to Linn in 1991.
"I'm a Linnite, true and true," he said. "It's a town of 1,500 people (and) we're blessed with wonderful people.
"You can't beat Osage County people, and I think we have some of the best of them working for us."