Q Please tell us about Swoosie Kurtz. She's a wonderful actress and was a lovely young teenager. Our family was stationed with her and her parents in 1950 at Anderson Air Force Base.
—A. Wheelan, Las Cruces, N.M.
Kurtz, 63, back on television as an eye-patch-wearing former synchronized swimmer in the hit ABC series Pushing Daisies, is the only child of U.S. Air Force Col. Frank Kurtz and wife Margo, an author. Her name is derived from the warplane her father flew in World War II—a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, nicknamed the "Swoose" after a line from a popular ditty of the day about a bird that was half-swan, half-goose. The award-winning actress, who starred in the 1990s TV series Sisters and appeared in dozens of other TV, movie and stage productions, never married and has no children. And Swoosie is choosy when it comes to the roles she takes. "If a part doesn't ‘speak' to me," she says, "I'd rather wait for something better to come along."
