Obituaries: Barbara Carole Sickmen – May 21, 1943 – April 18, 2022 (78)

Barbara Carole Sickmen, lyricist, composer and playwright, died peacefully on April 18, 2022, at her home in Manhattan. He was 78 years old. Born May 21, 1943 to Gussie and Sidney Emansky, she grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. She was always musical, showing promise at a young age as a singer and pianist on her family's Knabe upright piano. She was also a talented writer, winning a prestigious Emma Lazarus Award for her poem about the Statue of Liberty while in elementary school. At the age of 15, her beautiful singing voice landed her a recording contract with Jubilee Records. Her song, “All I Want for Christmas is a Steady Eddie,” received a B+ rating in Cashbox Magazine, the industry's leading magazine. He appeared on American Bandstand and in the Catskills at prominent hotels such as The Concord and Brown's, opening for such famous acts as Eddie Fisher, Alan King, Jerry Vale and Buddy Hackett. When she was 16 and a student at George Wingate High School, she met 18-year-old Ron Sickmen at her family friends' house. Within minutes the two were playing a duet on the piano, something they continued for 62 years. On May 25, 2022, the couple would have celebrated their 59th wedding anniversary. After graduating from high school, she attended The Fashion Institute of Technology and worked as a designer of women's evening dresses. She and her attorney husband moved to Long Island in 1971 to raise their two children, Jeff and Eliza. Between PTA meetings and sending her children to Girl Scout activities, dance recitals, religious school and ice skating lessons, Ms. Sickmen wrote plays and lyrics and composed music. In the 1980s, Ms. Sickmen wrote the book, lyrics and music for a play inspired by “Alice in Wonderland” for Kids for Kids, a Long Island-based theater company. The musical. “The New Adventures of Alice” was a critical success. Another musical, “The Prince of Poland,” for which he was the playwright, lyricist, and composer, was accepted for a regional run at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ms. Sickmen attended Stony Brook University, earning a BA in Theater Arts. While studying for a master's degree, he worked as a teaching assistant for theater legends John Houseman and Martin Gottfried. A longtime member of the Society of Composers and Lyricists, the Dramatists Guild, ASCAP and Women in the Theatre, Ms. Sickmen has worked with many distinguished members of the musical theater community. In 2009, when the Liberace Foundation for the Performing and Creative Arts was looking for a dramatic stage musical based on the life of the iconic closeted gay entertainer, asking that Liberace's lifelong desire for privacy be respected, it asked Ms. Sickmen to submit an idea. When her portrayal of Liberace as “an entertainer who happened to be gay” was accepted, Ms. Sickmen was praised by the Foundation's president as “a gift to the gay community.” He then approached two-time Tony Award-nominated author Roger O. Hirson (“Pippin”) to write the book. At first, Mr. Hirson resisted the offer, stating that he was not interested in writing a conventional book musical. After Ms. Sickmen added two characters, gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, to the story, Mr. Hirson finally agreed to write the book. Shortly thereafter, Ms. Sickmen asked her colleague, Marvin Hamlisch (“A Chorus Line”), to write the score. Although he was engaged in many other projects, he and Ms. Sickmen met often to discuss the musical structure of her work. He often asked her to show him a few bars of “mock music” to see what she had in mind in terms of rhythm and form while writing the lyrics. When he complimented her on a “dummy” tune, she would say, “But Marvin, it's just a fake tune,” to which Mr. Hamlis replied, “It's not that dumb.” After Hamlisch's untimely death, Ms. Sickmen took over writing the score for “Ben, Virginia & Me: The Liberace Musical” using her “imaginary tunes.” In the summer of 2017 the musical premiered to favorable reviews at The New York Musical Festival at the Off Broadway Acorn Theater on 42nd Street in New York City. Passionate about Broadway and all things musical, Ms. Shikmen was a longtime supporter of the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, where she and her husband, a member of the Sag Harbor Yacht Club, enjoyed spending summers on their yacht, Fair Trial . ” Ms. Sickmen's greatest love was her family. She is survived by her husband, son Jeff, daughter Eliza, son-in-law Brian Ziedt, and grandchildren, Spencer and Eli Ziedt.