Obituaries

Dr. Saul Kaufman Bloch, born March 18, 1927, in Springfield, Massachusetts, died on Tuesday, February 15, 2022, in Los Angeles, California. Saul was one month shy of his 95th birthday.
Saul is survived by his wife, Jill Jacobson; four children–Diane Bloch, Laura Bloch, Susie Bloch, and Sheryl Bloch; five grandchildren–Rachel Miller, Eden Alper, Noah Price, Isaac Rodriguez, and Sara Rodriguez; and his sister, Judi Bloch.
At age 15, Saul entered a national contest to be on the weekly Quiz Kids Radio Show, for which he had to write an essay on why he was qualified. Saul submitted his essay in verse. He placed third. Saul continued to submit essays in verse while in high school, which he thought a very clever way of getting around the problem of proper punctuation. Saul was a voracious reader, and he devoured science fiction and the plays of Shakespeare. A passion he passed on to his children and grandchildren.
In 1945, Saul was drafted into the army, where he received an Expert Marksman Medal for the M1 Rifle. It was a popular war, and everybody wanted to be involved. He was discharged in 1947. Later that year, Saul started college at the University of Massachusetts, on the GI Bill. He was pre-med, with a major in physics, a minor in math, and chemistry as a special interest. He was the only pre-med student taking differential equations, vector analysis, and chemical thermodynamics. He graduated UMass in 1951 and entered Tufts Medical School in September.
At the end of his residency, Saul knew that he didn’t want to go into the business of medicine and decided that he liked the way medicine was practiced at Kaiser Permanente. There was an opening at the Sunset location, in Los Angeles. Saul spent his career as an OB/GYN at Kaiser Sunset. In 1962, one of Saul’s colleagues, who was primarily interested in cancer, had a patient who wanted to get pregnant. He referred her to Saul. Together, they started a fertility clinic at Kaiser. They were originally allowed half a day a week, then they got half a day each a week, and it expanded from there. Fertility was originally an orphan sub-specialty. When Clomid came out in 1967, Saul and his colleague were very excited.
Saul loved being a doctor and in retirement continued practicing medicine as a volunteer at the Los Angeles Free Clinic (now the Saban Community Clinic) and at the UCLA Health Clinic.
Saul was a gift. His wife, Jill, feels blessed that he came into her life and cherishes every day of their 30 years together. He had a great sense of humor. Saul was unpretentious, and thoughtful. Always. Saul never had an unkind word to say about anybody. Ever. He did the right thing, because that was the right thing to do. Simple.
Though vaccinated and recently boosted, Saul died from complications of Covid-19. This beautiful, brilliant, gentle man, this precious man, so deeply loved, was vulnerable. Saul was one of over a million Americans stolen from their loved ones by Covid-19. In Saul’s memory, protect all our vulnerable loved ones. Because it’s the right thing to do.