 We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. As his words propelled us toward a higher frontier in 1962, President Kennedy also spoke of being in an hour of change and challenge in a decade of hope. Only a few weeks earlier, and within hearing distance of JFK's historic speech, Dr. Denton A. Cooley had already embraced this age of challenge and launched his own hope in the world. Like the space program, this launch had profound consequences for all mankind. Dr. Cooley had founded the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital. Not to slip the surly bonds of earth, but to break the deadly grasp of premature death and untold human suffering. Not to probe deep space, but to go deep inside the human heart. And to meet this challenge, Dr. Denton Arthur Cooley was exactly the right man. Well, Dr. Cooley did the first open heart surgery here in April of 1956. Now, there were two other centers doing heart surgery at the time. The Mayo Clinic University of Minnesota, by the end of the year, 1956, he had done more surgery than the two programs combined, and he continued to do so for the next 35 years. He did more heart surgery than anyone in the world. A gifted student and outstanding athlete, young Denton entered the zoology program at the University of Texas at Austin in 1939 at age 16. He graduated in 1941 with highest honors and then began his medical training at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Along the way, he would become fascinated by the surgical scene and the teamwork that embodied surgery. He transferred to the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, where he earned his medical degree again at the top of his class. He began his internship in 1944 under the tutelage of Dr. Alfred Blalock, the 24-year-old Cooley assisted Blalock in the world's first operation to correct the type of congenital heart defect that leads to low oxygen in the blood. The pioneering procedure became known as the blue baby operation. It was also seen as the dawn of the modern heart surgery era. From his participation in Denton, Dr. Cooley would go on to become one of the era's brightest lights. His skill as a surgeon and his resourcefulness as an innovator were unmatched and would have an impact on many thousands of lives. Forty-three years ago, I was seven years old. I was very sick and my parents took me to go see what was the problem. When they found out that I had a hold in my heart in the atrium, Dr. Cooley examined me and they had decided I needed to have surgery because if I didn't have the surgery, it was stated that I wouldn't live to be in my teens or my early 20s. Again, I thank Dr. Cooley and I thank God for using him and being a blessing to us in our lives. For the greatest gift, Dr. Cooley, thank you. Dr. Cooley's accomplishments would become legion and legend. Among them, he pioneered surgical techniques to correct congenital heart abnormalities in infants and children, to bypass clogged coronary arteries, to repair aortic aneurysms. He developed and perfected new methods for repairing and replacing diseased heart valves. As a young intern, he developed a defibrillator, an electrical device, to shock the heart back into a normal rhythm. So I set about on my own to develop a defibrillator at Johns Hopkins Hospital when I helped make the paddles that you put on the heart. I had a rheostat that we put on the floor that you'd manipulate with your foot to get the degree of electrical shock that was available. And that box and so on with all the medications in it remained in use there at Johns Hopkins for almost ten years. Not much of a salary at the time, my salary was $50 a month. But I did spend almost $150 on the machine. With more significant, he helped to refine, improve and expand the use of a heart-lung machine that bought surgeons precious hours, not minutes, within the human heart. But Dr. Cooley really demonstrated that safe, effective surgery could be performed to a large degree with the heart-lung machine and allowed the expansion and the utilization of this technology worldwide. The expanded use of this life-saving machine helped set in motion a surgical career in which Dr. Cooley and his team would perform more than 100,000 open heart surgeries. For all of these accomplishments, he would receive recognition from around the world. His awards included the country's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and its highest science award, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. But beyond the medical milestones, the incredible inventiveness, past all the adoring accolades, Dr. Cooley had an even bigger dream and the will to make it happen. So in a time of challenge and change, the Texas Heart Institute was just getting started.