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16 t m c » p u l s e | f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 9 Chilling at Cool Acres The Brazos River retreat owned by the late Denton A. Cooley, M.D., was home to the annual St. Luke's family picnic B y B r i t n i R . M c A s h a n I n 1958, pioneering cardiovascular surgeon Denton A. Cooley, M.D., purchased a Brazos River retreat for his family that was not too far from their Houston home or from Cooley's patients in the burgeoning Texas Medical Center. He christened the ranch Cool Acres. "My father worked seven days a week," said Susan Cooley, Ph.D., a nurse and former profes- sor at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, who is one of the physician's five daughters. "He worked Saturdays until 2 p.m. and then had to be back on Sunday afternoon. He would come home after Grand Rounds on Saturday, honk the horn and we would all jump in the car with my mother, the fried chicken and as many friends as we could pile in, and go out to what we would call 'the farm.'" Located in Orchard, Texas—about 30 miles south of Houston—the 406-acre compound spreads across nearly one mile of riverfront property. The ranch sits on a bluff 115 feet above the Brazos River and includes five homes built between 1960 and 1982. In addition to a pond named Lake Louise—after the surgeon's wife— the property holds two tennis courts, a pool, a roller skating rink and party pavilion, stables for horses and even Orchard's original post office building. Denton A. Cooley was a busy heart surgeon who performed the first successful human heart transplant in the United States—a bold act that famously fractured his relationship with his mentor, Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.—and became the first heart surgeon to implant a total artificial heart in a human. He was 96 when he died in 2016. And today, Cool Acres is for sale, with an asking price of $7.3 million. For decades, though, Cool Acres was more than a place for the Cooley family to play and relax. The property also served as the site of the annual St. Luke's family picnic for many years. Starting in 1960, Cooley and his family welcomed staff from what was then St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital. Doctors, surgeons, nurses, residents and their