Henry Bloch, co-founder of H&R Block empire, called himself the ‘luckiest man ever’

Nicholas Bloch broke down and cried recently when someone told him he had similar traits as his grandfather, Henry Bloch.

It was the greatest compliment he could receive, he said.

During Bloch’s public memorial service Monday, when dozens of people gathered at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art to remember the Kansas City philanthropist, family members recalled how Bloch considered himself the “luckiest man ever.”

From becoming the driving force, along with his late brother Richard, behind the H&R Block Inc. tax preparation dynasty, to surviving 32 missions over Germany in the Army Air Corps during World War II, luck was the word he always came back to.

But Nicholas Bloch said his grandfather, who died Tuesday at 96 surrounded by family in hospice, made his luck.

“Our grandfather is as good as it gets,” he said, calling him the type of man who comes around once in a generation. “You did so much for the city.”

Born in Kansas City on July 30, 1922, into a prominent Jewish family, Henry Wollman Bloch left an imprint on his hometown and its business, educational and artistic organizations that has been incalculable. He changed the skyline, marshaling his fortune and influence with his namesake foundation to create the H&R Block headquarters downtown and the Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Bloch was the philanthropic force behind the glass “lenses” that are the Bloch Building, the glowing and cascading modernist structure that all but floats along the east side of the museum where the public gathered to remember him. Soon after its opening in 2007, a critic for The New Yorker magazine hailed the work by architect Steven Holl as “one of the best museums of the last generation.”

More recently, Bloch donated 29 of his personal and nearly priceless impressionist and post-impressionist paintings to the Nelson. Visitors by the tens of thousands since 2017 have enjoyed the artwork of Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and others that once hung in the home of Bloch and his wife Marion Helzberg Bloch, who died in 2013.

One of Bloch’s sons, Bob Bloch, recalled their shared passion for art and how they debated where to place art in his father’s home. He described his father as a soft-spoken gentleman with a sense of humor.

Bob Bloch told the crowd his bond with his father began at the dinner table, where he steered his children in the right direction. He smiled as he said his dad would eat every day at Winstead’s Steakburgers if we could.

The way Henry Bloch lived his life, his son said, was simple: “Love others, work hard and do what is right.”

This story was originally published April 29, 2019 at 6:18 PM.