Charles W. Wayman died Thursday at age 90.
He grew to be an icon of Emporia’s banking industry, starting with his first banking job in January 1940. At the time of his death he was chairman emeritus of the recently-renamed Emporia State Bank and Trust, now known as ESB Financial.
Born in Emporia, he was married Sept. 4, 1943, to Elva Lee James, who survives of the home. She is the first woman to serve on a bank board in Emporia and remains director emeritus of the ESB board.
Wayman’s daughter, Karen Wayman Sommers, an ESB vice president, said Wayman, a World War II Army veteran, had been having health problems for about 10 months following surgery last fall.
“There is a beginning and there is an end,” Sommers said. “Most of us don’t want to accept that, but it is true.”
Sommers and the Waymans’ sons, James and Bill, represent the fourth generation of Wayman family bankers. James Wayman is president and chief executive officer of ESB. Bill Wayman is a director of Namyaw Corp., an Emporia holding company.
For more than 106 years, ESB has been owned and run by the Wayman family, who also have been deeply involved in the community. Sommers said that Emporia remained close to her father’s heart throughout his life.
“He probably cared about people more than anyone I know,” she said. “He cared about this town, he cared about this bank. ... He cared about all of the people that made up the ESB banking family.”
In 1901, when Charles Wayman’s English-born grandfather, Will Wayman, was age 51, the elder Wayman sold his bank in Allen and opened Emporia State Bank on the northwest corner of Sixth Avenue and Commercial Street. He would be a banker in Emporia until the day he died in 1932.
Will Wayman’s sons followed in his footsteps at ESB, then grandson Charles Wayman, great-grandson James Wayman and great-granddaughter Sommers.
In 1991, Charles Wayman donated funds to helped restore the park’s pergola on the 90th anniversary of ESB. The park is located north of the Santa Fe tracks, between Union and Exchange streets.
The family requests contributions to the Emporia Community Foundation’s Fremont Park fund, in care of ECF, 527 Commercial St., Suite 401, Emporia, KS 66801-1337. For more information call 342-9304 or e-mail emporiacf@emporiacf.org.
Roberts-Blue-Barnett Funeral Home has the arrangements.