fired by WBAI manager Jerry Coffin. While he would continue to spend time at the WBAI studio and appeared as a guest on other shows, he would not host his own program on the station again. Beating and Recovery Around 4:30 AM on February 18th, 1978, Pitts was violently attacked by a stranger while waiting for a cab home in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. After spending the evening at a gay leather bar and then eating at an all-night restaurant, he was walking on 22nd Street towards 10th Avenue when an unknown man accosted him and began hitting him. Pitts did not fight back, but attempted to call for help. The attacker eventually began to walk away, but when Pitts attempted to reach a telephone booth to call for help, the man returned and resumed beating him. He lost consciousness, and was eventually transported to St. Vincent’s Hospital by a police officer, where he awoke in the emergency room. The motivation for the attack was unknown. While the attacker did not use any verbal anti-gay slurs, Pitts understood the assault within the broader context of a wave of anti-gay violence taking place in New York City at the time. As he explained in a radio interview a month after the attack, “My getting beaten up was necessary for society to continue as it is now; whoever beat me up was also playing his part. These things are necessary in order to continue the oppression of homosexuals.” Pitts’ injuries were severe, including a splintered nose, a jaw broken in several places that had to be wired together, orbital fractures around the eyes, and major swelling to his head. The damage required a week of recovery at St. Vincent's, followed by a two-week stay at Bellevue where he underwent five hours of plastic surgery. Over the course of the year he underwent five different reconstructive operations, spending 48 days in hospitals. Recovery proceeded slowly, requiring a long regimen of pain medication; he would suffer from chronic pain as a result of his injuries for years. Later life Pitts continued to work in commercial radio through much of his time in New York City. He served as a Production Engineer at WNCN-FM from 1976 to 1991. In addition to his work miking, recording, editing, and mixing, he wrote a computer program called “Sked” to facilitate scheduling feature broadcasts. His commercial work garnered