On his many visits to an uncle in Shreveport, Terry King, a young country boy raised in the Texas flatlands, fell in love with the lush, rolling hills of North Louisiana.

Terri and his brother Richard grew up on a ranch in Texas.

Their parents Marjorie and Dean King valued hard work and taught their sons to appreciate a job well done.

Terry played summer baseball and was a member of the track team at his high school, where teachers voted him outstanding senior boy.

While pursuing a Master of Arts degree at the University of Texas, he decided to enter the university's medical school.

And in only two years and nine months, he obtained a medical degree.

He completed his post-graduate work in pediatrics and pediatric cardiology at Duke University.

During his time as an Air Force Major, Terry's skills as a practitioner and in the cath lab were refined.

Although no one agreed with him, he felt he could close holes in the heart with a catheter, rather than performing open heart surgery.

In 1972, Dr. King left the Air Force, joined the Ochsner Clinic, and worked with three incredible surgeons -- Drs.

Alton and John Ochsner, and Dr. Noel Mills.

It was Dr. Mills, a cardiovascular surgeon, who agreed that closing holes without surgery was possible.

And the two invented the King-Mills Cardiac Umbrella.

In 1975, Dr. King was the first person in the world to successfully close an atrial septum defect in a human.

He's personally performed this procedure on hundreds, if not thousands, of children/babies.

That technique has been used worldwide, so multiply that, and I don't know what kind of numbers you have, but it's going to be in the thousands and tens of thousands of people.

[DAVID KING] He spent a lot of time at the hospital taking care of very sick kids.

In awe of what things he would tell us things he would be doing.

At times, hearts being outside little babies' bodies and having to put those back in.

God gave him that talent to do that.

[SAMMY GORDY] I met Dr. King in about 1972, when our daughter - our oldest daughter - was an infant, and we were referred to him because she had a hole in her heart.

He told us that it would have to be fixed, and but we had to wait until she was five years old to do the surgery and close it.

It took me a little while to process what he had said, and I realized that he had carried us through those first few hours so well.

and able to make us feel comfortable with what we had facing us.

Terry has dedicated his life to taking care of children and educating others to do so.

and he has always cared for the less fortunate in the state.

[DAVID KING] My father likes to take care of people, so he's always willing to help.

Every time somebody needs money for medicine, he's always pulling money out and giving that to them.

He's just a kind person and his philosophy of life is just to try to treat everybody like you would want to be treated.

[NARRATOR] Terry moved to North Louisiana in 1978, and opened the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Francis Medical Center.

Next, came the catheterization lab and pediatric intensive care unit, keeping families with sick children close together was important to Terry.

[SAMMY GORDY] He and Alex George and Steve Romstone started Ronald McDonald House and, to this day, that was back in the seventies, and, to this day, people can take advantage of having a place to be close to the hospital.

[NARRATOR] And while maintaining his practice in North Louisiana, he spent seven years building the West Jefferson Medical Center, and he is also and entrepreneur.

In 1978, he started Kingsland Ranch in west Ouachita Parish, which with the help of his son, has grown to an eight hundred fifty acre cattle ranch.

Terry's contributions economically and with his entrepreneurial role, his restaurant business.

his ranch business, other businesses, that he's involved in, pretty astounding for someone who has a tremendously fully medical schedule.

[NARRATOR] Terry and his wife Nancy have five wonderful children and fifteen picture-perfect grandchildren They can often be found fishing off a dock at Lake Claiborne.

[DAVID KING] I love my father.

He's worked so hard.

He's always thinking about how he can make things better for everybody around him.

Just tickled to death to be his son.