Private service set for Hy Lit

Radio personality Hy Lit's memorial services today at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd will be private.

Mr. Lit, 73, died Saturday afternoon at Paoli Memorial Hospital. His son, Sam Lit, said yesterday that his father developed severe intestinal inflammation, or colitis, caused by the bacteria

Clostridium difficile.

He died nearly two weeks after he began treatment at Lankenau Hospital for an injured knee.

Gary Hendler, a spokesman for the Lit family, said there would be no further comment.

The administration of Main Line Health is looking into the circumstances surrounding Mr. Lit's death, spokeswoman Frieda Schmidt said. The health system is composed of Lankenau, Bryn Mawr and Paoli Hospitals.

Mr. Lit's daughter, Benna Martucci, remembered her father yesterday as a "brilliant, colorful man who could fill a room with his presence." She said her father would be buried next to his wife, Maggie, who died of cancer at age 50 in 2000. Miriam Lit, the DJ's first wife, and the mother of his children, is expected to attend. Mr. Lit was briefly married a second time.

The Internet radio-chat station RadioRacket.com planned to stream a tribute, including a June 2006 interview.

Retired Inquirer columnist Clark DeLeon described Mr. Lit yesterday as "an old soul in a boy's mind, and one of the most generous men I've ever met. You know how people would give you the shirt off his back? He'd buy you a new one." DeLeon met him about seven years ago, and they had worked on a biography of the radio pioneer. As for publishing the story now, "I have to let it settle in my mind," DeLeon said.

Mr. Lit, diagnosed with Parkinson's disease 15 years ago, was in financial straits, mainly because of the cost of medications.

Early last year, shortly after he received a settlement in an age-discrimination lawsuit he had filed against WOGL, he lost his stone Colonial house on Levering Mill Road in Bala Cynwyd to a sheriff's sale, records show.

The amount of the settlement was not disclosed. He had moved to a Penn Valley apartment, where he and his son, Sam, operated an Internet radio station,

» READ MORE: www.hylitradio.com

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Besides his children, Mr. Lit also is survived by his sister, Udel Steinberg.

West Laurel Hill Cemetery officials said donations would be accepted at Hy Lit Radio, 1600 Hagys Ford Rd., Narberth, Pa. 19072.

Flowers can be sent to Bringhurst Funeral Home, on the cemetery grounds, at 215 Belmont Ave., Bala Cynwyd.