Herral Long, a long time friend to the Mountain Laurel Autoharp Gathering, is now residing in an assisted living facility in Ohio and, while he still has a couple of autoharps with him, he and his family have sold most of his household goods at an estate sale followed closely by a public auction.  Doug Long, Herral’s brother held out the rest of Herral’s autoharps from this process in the hope that they might be worth more than a few dollars to somebody.  He found an MLAG mailing among Herral’s things and contacted us.  He has offered MLAG the opportunity to sell the ‘harps and take a small commission if we can or, failing that, to use the ‘harps for the Autoharp Angels program or another charitable purpose to benefit the Gathering. Coleen and I went to Pittsburgh on June 10th, met Doug, and picked up the ‘harps.  We took them to MLAG and thanks to the help of Chuck Daniels, Pete Daigle, John Hollandsworth, Tom Fladmark and other, we received some great advice on the condition and value of the various instruments.  We sold a couple and put some of the smaller items in the Silent Auction. I’m using this method to describe what we’ve got left.  Obviously, Doug would appreciate seeing Herral’s estate realize some value from this process — Herral’s expenses are not completely covered by his estate — and we’re certainly interested in getting some value for Mountain Laurel as well.  We have three of Herral’s ‘harps left to try and sell and I’ve included pictures of the two that are immediately available and a description below.  George Orthey is restoring a third ‘harp to basically like new condition and we’ll post that when we have it.  If you’re interested in either of the two ‘harps shown below, contact me and let’s talk ...