Dr. Harold Lickey played a prominent role in choral music in Adventist higher education and in the debate on appropriate music in life and worship in the Adventist church. He was on the music faculty at four Adventist colleges and Andrews University. He also taught and also held the Oliver S. Beltz Chair of Sacred Music at the SDA Theological Seminary.

Harold Eugene Lickey was born in Colorado on July 9, 1942, the youngest of three sons of Arthur Edwin and Oda J. Truitt Lickey. His father was a Seventh-day Adventist minister, and the family moved frequently during his childhood. When he was ten, his mother died, and a few years later his father remarried.

Harold graduated from Enterprise Academy in Kansas in 1941. His college education was interrupted by World War II, and he joined the U.S. Airforce as an ensign. He married Vida Esther Pogue on September 18, 1945, the year the war ended. They had three children, John, Preston, and Robin Jean.

He graduated from Union College in 1950 with a degree in religion and completed at M.Mus. in 1958 at Texas Christian University. He studied at the University of Southern California and Stanford University and completed a D.Mus. at Indiana University in 1970.

He taught for one year at Enterprise Academy as choir director and voice teacher.

He then became an original member of the resident male quartet for the television program "Faith for Today," working with Dr. Melvin West, organist for the program, whom he had known earlier. He later taught at Union, Southwestern Junior, Pacific Union, and Walla Walla colleges.

He was known as a fine tenor soloist and a dynamic choir director. While at WWC, he worked closely with West in performing landmark works in choral literature. West would later observe that working with Lickey in the presentation of music such as the Brahms and Durufle Requiems, Creston's Prophecy of Isaiah, and the Poulenc Gloria was a highpoint of his experience at WWC. In addition to heading the vocal/choral program at WWC, he also served as chair from 1974 to 1979. He left in 1979 to accept a position at Andrews University, where he taught until he retired.

The LIckeys lived in the Portland area in retirement, continuing to be active in music activities, often with his friend Dr. Melvin West. He was living in Milwaukie, Oregon, at the time of his death in 2015 at age 90.