Teen to hold auction for foster children
By MIKE DOUGHERTY City editor

PREPARING FOR AUCTION Megan Long, a 2006 Glen Rose High School graduate, runs an auction house and pet store in Benton. MIKE DOUGHERTY PHOTO

Born on Christmas Day 1988, Megan Long has always had a great Christmas.

She wants to ensure that Saline County children in foster homes also have a good holiday, so her business will conduct a benefit auction to raise money.

The action at Meg's Auction House, 3420-C Salem Road in Benton starts at 1 p.m. Sunday.

It will be conducted through the Toys for Tots program, but all proceeds and any new, unwrapped toys donated will be designated to go to Long's designated charity, the foster children in Saline County.

"We want to get everybody to come out and get everybody involved in helping the foster children in this county have a great Christmas," Long said.

The auction house is open from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday and 9 a.m. to noon Wednesday.

Anyone wanting to arrange to drop off an item for the auction or to donate a toy at a different time may call her at 860-4268.

Long started the auction house on April 10 after attending the Worldwide College of Auctioneering in Mason City, Iowa in February.

It is a 10-day course that teaches students different aspects of the auction business - ranging from learning to develop an individual chant and controlling an auction during a sale to filling out tickets to complete the sale, and how to conduct different types of auctions.

"It was a great experience," Long said. It was from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day, so they were long days and they crammed a lot into the 10 days.

"They videotaped us trying to do our chants on the first day there and then they taped us doing them lat in the school to show us how much we had improved.

"On the last day, we had a student-run auction in which we each had to sell an item. I was nervous, but we all did fine."

Long said she was one of seven women in the class of 57 at the Mason City School.

"Most of the women were there to learn how to do real estate auctions," she said. "I may go into the real estate auctions later because you can make good money conducting them, but I was there to learn how to do the chant like the men I have seen when I have gone to auctions."

She said she began going to auctions with her parents, Jeannie and Ray Long, at Perry's Auction House in Benton and with her grandparents, Roy and Dorothy Wright at GodBeHere Auction Co. in Hot Springs.

Her parents run Finer Things, 17916 Interstate 30 in Benton. Her grandmother helps her run Finer Pets, the pet store next door. It opened June 16, 2006.

"My grandmother bought out a pet store in Nashville, Arkansas," Long said, "so she brought the pets home and we started the pet store. At first it was inside my mom and dad's store, Finer Things, but we finally moved next door."

Her interest in the auction business began with the visits to auctions with her relatives, but she decided on her own to go to the suction school in Iowa.

After she told her family that she had decided to go to the school, she was surprised by news that her grandfather, Roy Wright, gave her.

"He asked me where I was going to auctioneer's school," Long said, "and when I told him 'Iowa,' he said, 'You're not going to believe this but I went there 20 years ago.' "

He had attended the Mason City school in 1986, she said, but had never taken the auctioneer licensing test when he returned to Arkansas.

Long said Wright decided to go with her to Iowa and take the refresher course the school offered.

When they returned, she took and passed the Arkansas auctioneer licensing test.

"I made an 87," she said. "While I was waiting to hear from the licensing board, I was getting ready to open the business.

"To sell items on confinement, you have to have your license displayed.

"We had our first auction scheduled for April 10. On March 30, I still hadn't received my license, so we started making plans to sell items that we owned, which you can sell without a license. … My license arrived the next day."

"Perry and Shary Appling here in Benton have been so good to me," Megan Long said. "They have helped me a lot and really taught me the ropes in the auction business in this area."

Long said she is an only child and has been "spoiled rotten" by her parents and grandparents. She said she realizes that she has been fortunate and that her family taught her to "give back" for a reason.

"That is one reason why I started getting involved in the Toys for Tots. At first, I was just going to have a donation box here at the auction barn.

"But I decided that I wanted to do more, so I decided to hold the auction and donate all the proceeds to the Saline County Foster Care Association.

Long said she hopes to have a large turnout for the charity auction. She urged anyone wanting to donate an item to be auctioned off to bring it by the auction barn on Salem Road.

She said they also would take new toy donations for Toys for Tots or monetary donations that will go to the Foster Care Association to buy the children toys.

She grew up in Benton, Long said, playing softball for most of her childhood.

She transferred to Glen Rose High School before the 10th grade, she said, and resumed her softball career there, catching for the Lady Beavers.

She graduated a year early in 2006 and had an offer to play softball on partial scholarship for the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville.

Long decided to stay home and work, though, taking a year off from school. She spent time working at Tinsel Town and Mazzio's Pizza in Benton.

"I spend most of my spare time with my family and going to auctions," Long said. "I don't have time to date or anything like that because I spend so much time working."

She takes online classes in college algebra, American/national government and Fundamental of Information Technology this semester at Ouachita Technical College in Malvern, she said.

When she finishes at OTC, she hopes to transfer to the University of Arkansas-Little Rock and obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree in business and finance.

As for any other future plans, Long smiled and said: "I might get into real estate auctions. They say you can make good money in that."