Fourteen months ago, Bloch (pronounced block) would then have driven to the downtown headquarters of H&R Block, the $2.1 billion tax-preparation and computer-information company cofounded by his father and uncle in 1955, and pulled into the parking place reserved for the company's chief executive officer. But these days he steers through some of Kansas City's toughest neighborhoods before arriving at the rundown '50s-era St. Francis Xavier middle school on the city's blighted South Side.
Tom Bloch, 42, is no longer a young titan among Kansas City's business elite. In April 1995, he stepped before the H&R Block board of directors to announce that he would be resigning as the publicly held company's top-ranking executive that August—and walking away from a princely $618,000 salary—to become a full-time teacher. Board members were understandably shocked. No slouch as a businessman, Bloch had doubled the company's annual profits to more than $200 million during his three-year tenure as CEO. But Bloch wasn't to be swayed. On a recent morning at St. Francis Xavier, looking boyish in a short-sleeved sport shirt and khakis, he seemed perfectly at ease helping seventh graders at the Catholic school unravel the mysteries of algebra—and drying students' tears after a playground dustup. "I wanted to do something to help people who didn't have the opportunities I had," he explains. "In talking to people about education, I thought, 'What a fascinating place to be!' "
Indeed, teaching has been richly rewarding for Bloch—once he made a few adjustments. At H&R Block, he presided over global marketing strategies from behind a cherry-wood desk in an office filled with expensive oriental rugs. Today his well-worn wooden desk sits in the corner of a noisy classroom with cinder-block walls painted bright blue and green. For teaching middle-school algebra and geometry, he earns $20,000 a year—less than 3 percent of his old salary.
"This has got to be culture shock for him," says Marcia Seyffert, the assistant principal of St. Francis Xavier, whose 200 students are mainly from black working-class families, many on some kind of federal assistance. (School tuition—$1,800 per year—is subsidized by Kansas City's Catholic archdiocese.) "I think the hardest part for him was...control of the children," says Nancie Thomas, who has taught at the school for eight years. Bloch admits, "I was used to employees who behaved." And, he adds, "the most frustrating thing is when I encounter a student who just doesn't care." Bloch, who doesn't need state certification to teach at St. Francis Xavier, chose the school because of its high academic standards and commitment to children. "What I'm finding is, I'm spending quite a bit of time on the telephone with parents," he says. "Because if you can't get parents involved and supportive, it's difficult to make progress."
Bloch, who relies on savings and investment income to support his family's comfortable lifestyle, proudly recalls the day last June, at the end of the school year, when one of his fourth graders gave him a "World's Number One Teacher" refrigerator magnet. "I thought, 'Boy, this is my bonus,' " he says, "to have a student say, 'Mr. Bloch, you're my favorite teacher.' "
Anomalies abound. Bloch is one of only three male teachers at the school. And last month, Bloch, who is Jewish, took his turn leading the student body—which is less than 10 percent Catholic—in morning prayer. (He also told them about Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year holiday.)
Until he had children of his own, Tom Bloch never imagined a career outside the family business. The second child of Marion, 66, a homemaker active in civic affairs, and company chairman Henry Bloch (who, according to family lore, named the firm he and his brother Richard created H&R Block to prevent confused customers from calling it H&R Blotch), Tom was fascinated by his father's work. He describes his upbringing in upscale Shawnee Mission, Kans., as "nothing extraordinary," with one exception. Starting at the age of 4, he traveled with Henry to out-of-town business meetings, and at 7 he wrote, "When I grow up I want to be an income tax man." Long before he graduated as Shawnee Mission East High School's 1970 valedictorian and enrolled at Claremont Men's College outside Los Angeles to study economics, he knew his future. "I went knowing what I wanted to do," he says.
Bloch officially joined H&R Block as an entry-level tax preparer in 1974 and quickly scaled the corporate ladder. Yet even as he thrived in the business world, Bloch says, he had another priority: his wife, Mary, 40—a former St. Louis attorney whom he met on a blind date and married in 1982—and their two sons. "Tom rarely went on corporate golf outings and didn't like to travel," says his former secretary Mary Vogel. "When he wasn't at the office, he was at home."
But when Bloch became CEO in 1992, his hectic schedule became all-consuming. "I could see the toll it was taking on him," says his wife. "The kids would talk to him, and he would nod. But if you asked him to repeat what they said, he couldn't. He was still processing the [business] day."
In 1993 he began thinking about resigning. "I didn't want to look back on my life and say, 'Gee, you had an opportunity to play a bigger role in [your children's] lives and didn't take it,' " he says. (Mary offered one piece of advice: Don't make a decision during the chaos of tax season.) Bloch realized his unusual good fortune: he was wealthy enough to quit his job without jeopardizing his family's financial security. When he made the decision to leave, he says, "the hardest part was telling my father."
Henry, 74, admits being surprised and initially saddened, since his son's departure meant the company would be run by someone outside the family for the first time. But, he says, "we always felt it was important to give something back to the community." Others affected by Bloch's decision are enthusiastic. "Now we sit down to dinner and Tom's really here, mind and body," Mary says. St. Francis Xavier principal Lynne Beachner, his new boss, believes there's a real benefit in the message that Bloch is quietly sending to other Americans in positions of wealth and power. "What it says," she explains, "is that teaching is important."
PATRICK ROGERS
BONNIE BELL in Kansas City
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