In This Section      
 

Halsted's Hands - Deep in the heart of Hopkins

Halsted's Hands Spring 2011

Deep in the heart of Hopkins

Date: April 8, 2011

From left: Family patriarch Denton Cooley, Laura Fraser, Helen Fraser, Will Fraser, Louise Cooley Fraser, Gracie Fraser, Charlie Fraser and Chuck Fraser
From left: Family patriarch Denton Cooley, Laura Fraser, Helen Fraser, Will Fraser, Louise Cooley Fraser, Gracie Fraser, Charlie Fraser and Chuck Fraser

When Charlie Fraser came to Johns Hopkins last summer to do research in cardiac surgeon William Baumgartner’s lab, he became the third generation of his family to train in the Department of Surgery.

Charlie’s grandfather, heart surgeon Denton Cooley, completed his surgical residency in 1950 and went on to found the Texas Heart Institute. He also performed the country’s first successful human heart transplant and was the first to implant an artificial heart in a man. Charlie’s father, heart surgeon Charles “Chuck” Fraser Jr., did a surgical residency at Hopkins starting in 1984. He’s now chief of congenital heart surgery and surgeon in chief at Texas Children’s Hospital.

Charlie Fraser, a senior at the University of Texas who’s applied to medical schools including Hopkins, says it’s impossible to think that his family didn’t influence his passion for cardiac surgery, but it was also a personal decision. He has enjoyed watching his father and grandfather operate and has spent time with his father visiting the intensive care unit.

Charlie’s sister Laura, who received a master’s degree from the Bloomberg School of Public Health in December, also became drawn to surgery. When she started in 2009, her father recommended she contact Surgery Director Julie Freischlag. When Freischlag heard of Laura’s interest in international health, she put her in touch with pediatric surgeon Fizan Abdullah, who has ongoing projects in international surgery. Laura participated in Abdullah’s weekly research discussion group and with his connections completed an internship at the World Health Organization’s Emergency and Essential Surgical Care program in Switzerland.

“It was a privilege and also great fun to be part of a department that has been so formative in the lives of my grandfather, father and, most recently, my brother,” she says.
It all might not have happened here. Cooley was happily enrolled in medical school for two years at the University of Texas at Galveston, until some turmoil in the dean’s office prompted him to transfer to Hopkins. He graduated in 1944 and started his surgical internship. Just a few months later, he assisted Alfred Blalock in performing the world’s first “blue baby” operation. “It was the dawn of modern cardiac surgery,” Cooley says, “and I was privileged to be present and become a participant in the evolution of heart surgery since that historic date.”

Cooley served two years in the military in the middle of his training. When he returned in 1948, he met Louise Thomas, the head nurse on Halsted 5 and a graduate of Hopkins’ School of Nursing. They married the following January and recently celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary.

For Chuck Fraser, the decision to apply to Hopkins for residency resulted from a rotation he completed here during medical school. He and Cooley good-naturedly argued about whether he should finish training under Cooley, but when he was invited to complete his residency at Hopkins, he liked it so much he stayed. Chuck’s wife, Helen, Cooley’s daughter, did clerical work for the Wilmer Eye Institute, and their two youngest children were born at Hopkins.

“Hopkins is central to who I am as a surgeon and academician,” Chuck says. “It was a tough nine years, but I dearly love the place.”

Charlie and Laura say they didn’t advertise their lineage while at Hopkins, but they did appreciate having faculty friends of their family, like Baumgartner and John Cameron, available for advice.

“I think the family has developed a strong loyalty to Hopkins in all of its different schools,” Cooley says.

Adds Chuck, “When you go to a place like Hopkins, it’s so phenomenal that that’s what you measure things by. It’s part of our familial value system.”

Articles in this Issue

My Turn

Pam's Ponderings

Beyond the Dome

The Halsted Residents Fund

Class Notes

 

Related Services