Posted on: Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Hugh W. Lytle, former Advertiser editor, dead at 100

By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hugh W. Lytle, a former Honolulu Advertiser editorial page editor and press secretary for Gov. William Quinn, died Friday at a senior residential home in Novato, Calif., at age 100.

Lytle earned a Bronze Star during World War II for risking his life to obtain comprehensive accounts of Tenth Army operations on Okinawa.

The Bronze Star citation reads: "His specialized professional and military skills, diligence, tact and efficiency, Maj. Lytle made contributions of material importance to the prosecution of the war against the Japanese."

Those traits were also the basis of Lytle's notable contributions in journalism and public relations.

"He was a strong and dynamic person," David Lytle of The Sea Ranch, Calif., said of his father.

Lytle was the bureau chief for The Associated Press in Honolulu on Dec. 7, 1941. He reported for military duty the same day and was assigned to military intelligence. Lytle was later named chief of the Information and Historical Service on Okinawa.

After the war, the New Philadelphia, Ill., native, went to work at The Advertiser, where he who wrote columns on the opinion page until the early 1960s. He joined the Quinn administration and later worked as a free-lance public relations consultant in Honolulu.

Lytle retired to the Big Island in 1968; he moved to Novato in 1994.

His second wife, the late Druzella "Drue" Lytle, was The Advertiser's women's section editor from 1953 until her retirement in 1969.

Lytle is survived by his son, a grandson and two great grandchildren.

At his request, there will be no funeral service and his ashes will be scattered at sea beyond the Golden Gate Bridge.