Loretta Swit (b. 1937)
Filed under the name Loretta · February 10, 2026
Loretta Swit is best known for M*A*S*H, but the part of her story I actually want my players to hear about is the decades she's spent as a dedicated animal welfare advocate after the show made her famous — using the platform for something that mattered to her, long after the cameras could've easily just moved on. That's the same thing I try to teach with my summer camp: what you do with your platform once you've got one says more about your character than how you got it in the first place. An Emmy is a nice trophy, but a genuine multi-decade commitment to a cause is the kind of consistency I actually coach for. I've got former players who made it to college ball and even a short NBA stint, and the ones I'm proudest of are the ones who came back to help run drills for the neighborhood kids afterward. Swit sticking with animal welfare for that long tells me she's got that same kind of follow-through in her.