David Zippel, A Local Legend, and my Friend

David Zippel and I Junior Achievement Banquet 1970

I met David Zippel when we both were members of the Lehigh Valley Junior Achievement 1969-1971. In Junior Achievement we actively operated a closed circuit television studio under the supervision of the J.A. Leaders of Sammons Communications on Sullivan Trail in Forks Township/Easton, PA.    I knew as soon as I had gotten to know Dave that he was destined to do something big one day.  He was extremely talented and a true leader.

Dave also was always willing to go the distance, it is no wonder that this would one day be the title of the lyrics penned by this extremely successful lyricist.  During one creative think tank session I can remember Dave coming up with an idea to have a show on Extra Sensory Perception and he would try to get the Amazing Kreskin to perform on the show.  Dave's father Martin Zippel was well known in the area as the owner of Martin Zippel Toy Company in Phillipsburg, NJ.   Marty Zippel was a good friend of Lou Reda, the entertainment agent who landed a syndicated series for his client, the mentalist known as the Amazing Kreskin.


 At Christmastime we put on a puppet show of The Night Before Christmas. Once again Dave was instrumental in coming up with the idea of a children's show.   We hand made all of the puppets with papier-mâché  heads and cloth bodies.

There were about ten members and we each invited our toddler relatives and friends to be in the live audience.  My nephew Mark Dunwell, and my cousin Paula's daughters Andrea and Juliann Di Risio were in the audience.  Everyone was thrilled to see their children on TV!  Our show was a complete success.

Dave was a year behind me in school and that year was my senior year.  Mr. Donald Shreve who was the Operations Manager of the Lehigh Valley Chapter of Junior Achievement asked me to come back during the 1970-71 season as a leader and Sammons Communications gave me their seal of approval to represent them as one of their leaders.

I was quite happy to see that Dave decided to join again and be in our company.  That year we achieved the highest honors at the Junior Achievement Awards Ceremony winning both the Company of the Year, and the  President of the Year award which went to David Zippel.

David Zippel went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1976.  I ran into him that Christmas at the Palmer Park Mall and he was telling me that he was going to attend Harvard Law School.  But he decided to switch gears when he was handed the opportunity to write lyrics for the prominent Tony Award winning Broadway songstress Barbara Cook.  I had the pleasure of seeing Barbara Cook and Barry Manilow sing a duet at an Aids Benefit at Carnegie Hall in 1999, and she was amazing.  I see why David was so impressed as to take such a chance with the direction of his career.  Together with composer Wally Harper, they created more intimate voice and piano pieces for nightclub shows and  impressive over the top orchestral concerts for Barbara at venues such as Carnegie Hall.

David went on to write the lyrics for City of Angels on Broadway, and for this he won a Tony Award.  He was then nominated for an Academy Award for Go The Distance sung by Michael Bolton for the Disney cartoon Hercules, and then again nominated for Best Original Music Score for Mulan one year later.  He also wrote lyrics with Phil Collins for the cartoon Tarzan.

That local boy who came from College Hill in Easton, now lives at Central Park West and has accomplished the dreams he set out to achieve so long ago while putting on shows for closed circuit television in Junior Achievement. A few years ago I was quite surprised to receive a note from Dave talking about our memories of those days of our youth.   It is such a thrill to see that someone I knew made his dreams come true, and I knew he would!

Some of his achievements from Wikipedia:

• City of Angels (1989), an original musical with book by Larry Gelbart and music by Cy Coleman. Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, Best Actor (James Naughton Best Featured Actress (Randy Graff), and Best Set Design (Robin Wagner) and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics.
• The Goodbye Girl (1993), a musical based on Neil Simon's 1977 screenplay, with music by Marvin Hamlisch.
• Princesses (2003), loosely inspired by A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Zippel conceived and directed; book by Bill and Cheri Steinkellner, music by Matthew Wilder.
• The Woman in White (2004), an adaptation of the novel by Wilkie Collins, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, book by Charlotte Jones. The music and lyrics received a Tony nomination for Best Original Score. The show was nominated for five Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best Musical.

Zippel contributed lyrics to The Swan Princess (music by Lex de Azevedo, the song Far Longer than Forever was nominated for a Golden Globe Award), as well as provide the singing voice of Jean-Bob the Frog and his composition I'll Stand by You (performed by The Pretenders), and more notably wrote the lyrics for the Disney films Hercules, with music by Alan Menken (the song "Go the Distance" received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song) and Mulan, with music by Matthew Wilder. The music and lyrics received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Musical Score. A year later, Zippel collaborated with Phil Collins for Tarzan. He was in his agent Richard Kraft's film Finding Kraftland.
Current unproduced projects include Buzz! (with Menken and Gelbart), The Private Lives of Napoleon and Josephine (with Coleman and Gelbart), and Going Hollywood (1981), an unproduced adaptation of Once in a Lifetime by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart; book by Zippel and Joe Leonardo, music by Jonathan Sheffer.^[3]
Pamela's First Musical, written with Coleman and Wendy Wasserstein, based on Wasserstein's children's book, received its world premiere in a concert staging at Town Hall in New York City on May 18, 2008.^[4]
In 2011, Zippel wrote the lyrics to the song "The Star-Spangled Man" featured in the film Captain America: The First Avenger. Alan Menken composed the music for the song, which was an affectionate send-up of 1940s Irving Berlin songs

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Zippel