Beverly Clevenger performs solo during the 2010 Homecoming pregame. Clevenger promised her gradaughter Julia Bosley of Excelsior Springs she would perform at the game if Bosley elected to attend the University of Missouri.
Beverly Swafford Clevenger is a woman of her word.
Not only was she a 67-year-old woman who hadn’t picked up her baton in four years, but she also had broken several bones in her left foot after falling down some stairs in November 2009. The injury required corrective surgery, three titanium screws, two pins and intense therapy.
“I had no idea how this would work out while looking at my cast that winter,” says Clevenger, who was an MU feature twirler in 1961. “But Julia had been accepted to Mizzou, and I had to do it.”
Clevenger, who attended MU from 1961–63 and finished her degree at UMKC in 1989, made the promise during Mizzou’s 2005 Homecoming, when she performed with the alumni band for the third time and took along Bosley, then an eighth-grader.
Reviewed 2013-01-23