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Information at Acadian dot com with additional support from the Doré Family Foundation Fund Scotty Moran and Richard and Elaine Zu blog Hello, I'm John Dennison and welcome to Louisiana Legends Today I'm sitting down with 2021 legend, Dr. Terry King, on his ranch.

There's a lot more to see.

But first, let's take a look at Terry's biography 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.

Terry 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 then 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 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 doctors Elton and John Ochsner and Dr. Noel Mills it was Dr. Mills, a cardio vascular 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 and atrial septal defect in the Cuban He's personally performed this procedure on hundreds, if not thousands of young 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 They spent a lot of time at the hospital taking care of very sick kids.

We were just in all of what things we would tell us he would be doing at times, you know, heart being outside of the little baby's bodies and having to put those back in The God gave him that talent today that 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 be able 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 the, those first few hours so well and able to make us feel comfortable with what we had facing us.

Terri 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.

My father likes to take care of people so he's always willing to help.

I every time somebody needs money for medicine, he's always pulling money out.

And given that to him, he's just a con con person.

And his philosophy of life is just trying to treat everybody like you would want to be treated.

Terri moved to north Louisiana in 1978 and opened the neonatal intensive care unit at Saint Francis Medical Center.

Next came the catheterization lab and pediatric intensive care unit.

Keeping families with sick children close together was important.

To Terri.

He and Alex, George and Steve Ron Strum 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.

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

In 1978, he started Kingsland Ranch in West Washington Parish.

Which, with the help of his sons, has grown to an 850 acre cattle ranch.

Terry's contributions economically with his entrepreneurial and his restaurant business, his ranch business, other businesses that he's involved in.

Pretty astounding for someone who has a tremendously full medical, said you.

Terri and his wife Nancy have five wonderful children and 15 picture six grandchildren.

They can often be found fishing off a dock at Lake Claiborne.

I love my father.

He's worked so hard.

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

Just tickled to death to be a son.

Terry, it's good to sit down with you again today.

Good to see you again.

John, thank you.

And I'm glad you're here.

I've enjoyed our relationship a great deal.

Well, we're sitting here on this beautiful large piece of property.

Tell us about the ranch here.

Well, it's an 850 acre operational ranch, and we raised naturally raised beef, and we sell it.

We package it.

We sell it to a number of stores.

And I grew up on a ranch, as you know, years ago in the flatlands of Texas.

And I always wanted a rolling Hill ranch.

And I finally have it now here in north Louisiana.

So you came to Shreveport and you saw those rolling hills there over in northwest Louisiana.

You just went a little further east.

Yeah.

I'm glad you found it.

Well, speaking of growing up in Texas and coming and visiting here, what was your childhood like?

Well, I grew up on a ranch, and it was operational ranch.

And it was back in the forties and fifties, and it was like being a real cowboy.

We rounded up the animals.

We herded into the pans that we the horn them.

We did all the things you do, the cattle.

And it was looking back to the 11 years that I spent on the ranch was probably the most influential years that formed the man I am today, I think.

Would you say you have that in your blood?

I certainly do.

Well, then how in the world did you want to be a cardiologist?

Not a full time ranch.

Well, it's interesting.

As you know, I came to Shreveport as a young man to work with my Uncle Truman Thomas.

They had to have his company, who was a neurologist, and he got me to come there to check cotton.

And I actually he had a daughter that was more like the son.

And so I checked cotton every summer, starting a full time in the summers about age 13 old and I was at the University of Texas.

I ran track at the University of Texas.

And there was not a lot of entomology there.

And I thought about being a physician, but then I got interested in biology and I started working on my master's and a professor said, Terry, you need to go to medical school.

That I dreamed of that at age eight to be a physician.

I actually thought about it that early age.

Was cardiology something an early interest or did you develop that?

As you know, it was primarily the the the person that owned our race that my daddy read.

It was a family practitioner.

So I thought about that.

And then when I went to medical school, I was thinking primarily about being a heart surgeon.

And I met Dr. Di Schnur, who was chairman of the Department of Pediatrics, and Lynn Harris who was cardiologist.

I got interested in cardiology in my first year of medical school, and then I shifted over that.

I never wavered after that.

And that interest led to the thing that the world knows you for, and that is the King Mils cardiac umbrella, which you you and Dr. Mills developed.

Yes.

In the 1970s.

It's still in use today, is it not?

Well, it's the concept and the procedure is still in use.

The devices are about 13 different devices in the world, but they're based upon a double umbrella.

And if you go to my office you'll see the original double umbrella.

What, what had you noticed and we're talking about children.

We're talking about pediatric cardiac patients.

What did you noticed in these children that you thought, you know, there's a problem here that maybe we can solve Well, they want to live.

They love to live, and you want to help them live and you want them to have a healthy, productive life.

And interesting enough, when I first thought of why can't we fix heart, your heart was catheters rather than heart surgery.

Well, everybody I talked to said it can't be done because the heart lung machine was only 20 years old when I thought of this.

And so I thought, well, if we could there were things we were doing that made me think we really could do this.

And so what really happened is in the Air Force, a particular patient helped me really finalize my thought.

And I was thinking about it.

One morning, about 4:00 in the morning.

What can I what would I put in a catheter that I could pass into the heart that would be small enough.

But when I got it there, it opened it.

It would be big enough to close a hole.

And that was voila, an umbrella.

There it was 4:00 in the morning that's cool.

That's that's quite an epiphany.

That's right.

It sounds simple, but obviously it is extremely delicate and complicated.

Yes.

Did you have some early issues where there was was it difficult to develop or you just had pictured it so well in your mind that once it was out there, it actually worked?

Well, first off, being told it couldn't be done.

I had to meet I had to have a surgeon help me with this.

And most surgeons were hard into the heart lung machine.

And I was finishing up my Air Force years and I was having a job offers around the United States.

And I went to Tulane and interviewed and then decided I'd be in the country boy I am, I wanted the hills and I didn't think New Orleans was a place for me.

But John Ochsner called me at Lackland Air Force Base at the hospital, Wilford Hall , and said, Terry, we want you to come back and interview with the Ochsner clinic and I said, Dr. Ochsner, I'll take you know, I'm just a country boy, and I meant that sincerely, you know, you know how I am.

And they said, he'll come back and God's had his hand in this all along.

And so I went back and met John Ochsner.

And during the interview process, that process there, I met Noel Mills, and I asked him, I asked a surgeon this question, Noel, and I said, actually, I said, Dr. Mills, do you think we can close hearts with catheters He said, not only did he think he could, he thought for sure it could be done.

And he jumped up and he'd been experimenting with catheters in adults for in for me a six hour hold and.

So that started I went the extra clinic that's how it happened.

That's how it happened in working with children primarily.

How has that impacted your life?

Well, they give you more than you can ever give them.

It's a joy I've had.

We don't know for sure how many patients I've actually treated, John.

That's it's over 300,000.

And I've probably treated in every parish and more children in this state, Louisiana, because I've had 15 clinics around the state.

And it's just interesting how pure and open they are about life.

And I think we owe it to give it to them.

And I have a feeling you've kept up with some of your patients have grown older and as they moved into adulthood.

Yes, it must be very satisfying.

Yes, it is.

It is amazing.

I have a saying everywhere we go, we've got to be nice because we just treated somebody in the family.

So so it's wonderful to to be part of that.

Many families, children have a depth of gratitude for your invention.

Adults have a debt of gratitude for the way you were thinking.

Yes, I think they do.

And I'm grateful to God that they do.

And you're still practicing today?

Yes.

Yes.

For practice today.

You're going to the clinic after this interview, and you've already been.

I see.

What the viewer doesn't know is that today you've had a holiday party where are around the holidays.

And we're recording this.

And he's already been in with his staff and he's going back to say, yes, I love that.

Although having lived here on Kingsland Ranch as long as you have, I'm sure it's hard to get away.

We'll talk about that in just a moment.

Did you did you feel like you had a turning point in any time in your career?

Like, obviously the device changed your life dramatically because.

Tell us about that.

Suddenly you go from being this little country doctor to somebody who's going around the world and talking about and explaining and demonstrating the device.

Well, I think there's so many people that contributed to my to my career that had nurtured me, guided me.

And but there was one particular physician, Dr. Madison Spock, who was head of pediatric cardiology at Duke University when I went there, I was a fellow.

They didn't really have the money for me.

I went there as a resident and I wanted to be a cardiologist.

And I was interviewing at Duke and see and Duke and Johns Hopkins and Boston Children's and Philadelphia Children's for slots.

And I went there.

I got an interview with them, and I met this young cardiologist.

I thought he was not much older than I was.

His name was Doctor Spot, Madison, Spock.

And he just he changed my life.

He literally changed my life.

He said when I became a fella, they were all these fellows that were from Harvard at Yale and staff heard and here goes country bumpkin up from Texas, you know?

And I thought, oh, I'm a place.

But he saw something and he said to me one day, said, Terry said, I want you to do three years of fellowship nobody's ever done in three years at that time.

And I said, Well, I didn't come here to really do three years of fellowship, and I don't want to do research.

He said, But trust me, do it.

And I tell the story.

He said, Terry, you're not the brightest box, brightest color in this box.

So I think you need three years.

That's what I tell on him.

He laughs about this, but he changed my life because the research I did directly that led to the ultimate development of the cardiac umbrellas.

Was it difficult at first going off to Germany or some other country to or did you just sort of like you know, this is just what I do and I can take this in stride now.

I think I took it in stride.

I mean, a lot of people should feel good about their hand in this and how it really came to pass.

A lot of people made this happen, not just me.

Cardiology today, is it much changed from when you began and when you developed the device, or do you see any new innovations that are exciting and it's a different world when I was at Ochsner I went to Poland in 1978, help set up the Heart program in Krakow, Poland.

And there were babies two in a crib and a surgeon and I the team was there from Project Hope and Bill Norwood was in Boston.

Children I was from the clinic, Ochsner Clinic and the teachers, the team was various parts of the United States.

There were two, two babies in a crib and we sat babies to surgery with the do it heart case, which we did.

I did five a day at times at Ochsner with a stethoscope, a chest X-ray and sent them to heart surgery and we they survived.

So the answer is it's a different world today in technology.

What we do with catheters used to be dealt with surgery.

There's so much that is done that you don't have to have massive surgery anymore.

We bypassed a lot of that.

Thank goodness.

It's so much less invasive.

Yes.

Yeah.

Wow.

And it's must be gratifying to think, you know, I was in on the cutting edge of the.

Yeah, you really were now I want to pivot completely from the operating room to the ranch.

Okay.

Because having grown up on a cattle ranch, myself, I drove up here today and I felt like I was coming home.

The house looked different, but a lot of the cattle looked the same.

Yeah.

So you obviously took your love of ranching from your childhood days and decided at some point you wanted to have your own spread here.

Tell me how that evolved.

Well, it went back to my childhood years, and then when I found this place, I knew exactly what I was looking for.

And so I left the actual clinic and came up here to build a program that, uh, Saint Francis.

My father was alive, and and he would come.

I got 75 acres, and I started and we've grown it over the years to 850, and my father would come and help me.

And we had a father son relationship like you would have on the old ranch, and then my sons come along and, and sons a one of my son runs the ranch, and other one you met today runs our bottling company.

And so it just never left my blood and this is something about being with nature, something about being with nature that God made the valley for us to have and to see and to share.

It's a beautiful spread.

That's a lot of land.

How many cattle are you running nowadays?

It's several hundred cows, calves and their different herds in different pastures.

Did you just basically start this as a hobby, or had you planned even early on that, you know, in addition to what I'm doing medically, we'll have a ranching business as well.

I designed this to be a business from the very first day you know, Hedley Pemberton from Australia, who happened to be here helping one of the Alabama singers.

I've heard of him.

I got him here twice, helped us lay out the ranch and we have a lot of water on the ranch.

And Louisiana is a great place to grow grass.

Cattlemen are not anything but grass growers.

We're just grass growers.

We can grow grass we can raise good beef.

We can cut that hay in the summer.

That's right.

And so it just it was really meant to be from the very start.

Yeah, well, tell us how that has evolved over the years, because I know and when I was growing up, it was a little more rudimentary.

We were talking just before the interview you mentioned for instance, the use of ultrasound.

Yes.

You know, just one of the innovations expand on that because that's unusual even to me.

Well, if when I was a young man, we were cowboys.

We man handled everything.

Yeah.

We we handled very gently.

Our corrals are all steel or curved walls.

The corrals a so they don't get in corners and we make our own feet.

And we used LSU helped us develop technology with ultrasound.

And so when we bring the steers or the young heifers through the squeeze chute, which is automated, hydraulically automated, not like a lot like the old school.

I like that.

And my son, we sent him off and got him trained in ultrasound.

So we up to ultrasound early on.

A lot of animals to see the rib eye size and how much intramuscular fat was in there.

And that was how we grew our feed program by technology used in the technology say that and if he found a heifer with a particularly nice rib eye size, you didn't sell her and you didn't sacrifice you put her back in the in the gene pool to give you more rib eye.

So there was a fair amount of science in this in the old days.

You put them out in the pasture and picked them up once a year.

And the crowd, as you know, and did the spring roundup, and that's something happens every day on a ranch.

So if somebody wants to sample some Kingsland Ranch beef, tell me how they can get that big oil or can they?

Yes, they can.

It's in a number of stores in the region.

And I hope our bottling plant water has been approved to get in brook service.

And I'm hoping to get our beef there.

But it's in Mack's fresh markets and a lot better strip malls already and in Ruston, Louisiana.

So, you know, so all of your viewers in other parts of the state, you need to make a northeast Louisiana trip to get some of this good beef.

And you touched on water.

Not only are you raising cattle you're bottling water here.

This is tell me about the spring where this area was known years and years ago as Mineral Springs.

And I looked the lake, that's the pond it's a 9.4 acre pond right out in front of the house.

We've had two estimates of the water coming off that, and it's in excess of 900,000 gallons a day.

And we have springs all over this place.

And I was thinking, well, what I need to do with this water is just run it off.

So a few years ago, I called the Dr. Reno it, you held him.

And I said, Nick, I've got this water, I need some help.

And Nick and then Nick sent Dr. John Sutherland out here, and we rode around the ranch, and he was really impressed with the spring water.

And so we started and we picked a particular spring, and I made a creek box at all time and crate box and I collected the water.

And then I bought a commercial box, which is about $300, and we collected one spring for about 18 months, and it produced 5.2.

5 million gallons of water.

Wow.

A year.

Then we got, I got to be a junior geologist.

And so there's six aquifers or so under us and I thought we'd hit the Whitfield four, which is about 300 feet, but we had the nice drilling company from Mississippi Drill five wells and picked the two best wells, which is about 500 feet from the plant.

And we've matched the spring water and the aquifer water, and they're both from the same source.

And now therefore we have spring water and then we bottled it and I'll be glad to show you the plant later.

Well, you know, so viewers, you may not be able to get to see this, but I'll enjoy that tour.

This is great.

You came here, you know, in the seventies and you, you know, you knew this is where you needed to be, but you didn't really know everything that was coming.

No.

On this on this great land that you'd get some more.

And that's a wonderful thing.

You've experienced a lot of successes in your life to what do you think?

Is there any one thing or things that you owe those successes to God?

God your faith is strong.

Yes.

Basketball pride is an eight year old.

Let me be a physician.

If he let me be a physician, I'd always do the best I could do.

And I never I hope I've never let him down.

Well, is there anything that you look back and say, I might have done this differently Well, sometimes I think had I not left the Ochsner Clinic where things changed but I think God leads you, where are you supposed to go?

And I was asked five years ago when I was interviewed in four, 900 doctors in Frankfurt, Germany, who did I think was my greatest success.

And I said my greatest success occurs every day when I have seen the children and the families in that part of those families.

I don't think there's any greater reward than that to be part of their family.

Successful, indeed.

What do you think the next chapter looks like?

For you?

Well, I think I'm still practicing.

I have no plans to retire.

The Bible does not mention retirement in it.

So so I think there's maybe a message there.

I think the water business is going well.

We're seen to be in brochures.

I think of I'd like to see that go national in.

It's great water, it's good water, it's healthy water.

And and then I'd like to grow the ranch some more.

I'd like to get it up to about 400 mama cows, which is about a thousand animals out here.

And you're writing your memoirs in the final throes of my autobiography.

We've been working on every night and putting the pictures in and in the Friday I think we'll have the last go around.

We get the five reviews back of the book, and so hopefully it'll go to press sometime after the first year.

My goodness.

Well, I want to read it, so I'll be looking forward to it.

I think our viewers will definitely want to delve into it because Terry King, you are a exemplary exemplar of a life well lived and a man of service, and that's got to give you a great pleasure.

Well, I give credit to God again.

He gave me two wonderful parents.

He gave me a very good man, and I didn't have anything to do with one of those.

And then he gave me unlimited energy and strength and the tremendous love of learning and the history and the joy of being able to make a difference in people's lives and the benefactor of their joy.

And I think, again, the credit goes to God because he gave me those talents and it would be a sin to not to share those talents.

Dr. Tara King, it's been a pleasure again to sit down with you.

Thank you so much.

You're so welcome.

Thank you.

It's been my pleasure.

Absolutely.

And thank you all so much.

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