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15 | The New Old Yip In 1966 Yip Harburg turned seventy, an age when people often frame their lives around retirement. Times had, in a way, forced Yip to do the same. As he himself reported, the cost of mounting a musical was so high that funding was difficult to raise, and he was seen not only as a political hot potato but also as old-fashioned. In addition, his collaborators were retiring or dying, leaving him more and more isolated. None of this stopped Yip from pursuing his creative or human rights work. He still wrote songs and involved himself in the musical community , but as the years passed, he placed more stress on writing light verse (much of it political), giving talks and interviews, and working for causes he believed in. In the process, he created the image of himself he wanted future generations to embrace. Much of what Yip has said, quoted throughout this book, in fact, is a result of the numerous public appearances and radio and television interviews he participated in during the 1970s. There were particular issues that Yip considered of utmost importance to address. Education was one. In recognition of the excellent education he had received even though he had been so poor, Yip gave back and was recognized for it. In 1967, for example, he funded a scholarship for a boy at the Oakwood School in North Hollywood. This was not the first time he did so. He also consistently gave money to his alma mater, City College; indeed, in 1968 he made a large donation , pledging $1,000 annually for five years and then a bequest of $10,000 in his will. From this funding came the E. Y. “Yip” Harburg Alumni Association Scholarship. In appreciation and recognition of his own success, in 1972 he received the James K. Hackett Medal for “distinguished alumni achievement in drama.” His name appears on a special plaque in City College’s North Academic Center honoring accomplished alumni. In 1979, Wayne State University, not part of Yip’s education, also honored him with a Humanity in Arts Award. Yip often donated money to support work in Israel, for example that of the Givat Haviva, an institution of higher education dedicated to building 236 | Yip Harburg Jewish-Arab friendship and understanding. This was one activity that led to his receiving the 1977 Negev Peace Award from the Israeli government . Yip also supported outreach and education in his own field—musical theater. In 1970, he was instrumental in launching the famous Lyrics and Lyricists series at New York’s 92nd Street Y. Two years later, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and continued to give one interview after another. Most important, in late 1980, Yip joined Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, and Sheldon Harnick at a news conference announcing the creation of a new musical theater program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, a program that has gained international renown. As expected, Yip continued to work for peace and human rights. In 1964, he and Burton Lane wrote “Freedom is the Word” for a huge, closed-circuit telecast for the NAACP, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Yip kept up his support of the Civil Rights Movement, and with it, the antinuclear and then the anti–Vietnam War movements. During 1967 and 1968, two of the most dramatic years in US history, Yip worked on a tribute to Dr. Benjamin Spock at New York’s Town Hall. Sponsored by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), the event honored the pediatrician who had put his career on the line to speak out against the Vietnam War and the effects of nuclear bomb testing on the earth’s people. Yip also performed at various antiwar rallies and donated money to several organizations, including the Congressional Peace Campaign Committee and the Student Mobilization Committee in New York. In July 1968, in response to the mobilization committee’s appeal for a donation to support its inclusive networking, Yip sent in $20 and this response: “I found your position ethical, democratic, and logical . . . I have been through too many decades of good movements which were blown into oblivion on the winds of inflexibility and fanaticism both from the right and from the left . . . You younger people, I hope, will have learned from our struggles, that if the goal is good, nothing must divide you...

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