About:

About the Author

Andy Harp was born in a small Arkansas town on the banks of the Mississippi River. As a child, while hearing his father recount his colorful military experiences in the Pacific during World War II, he gained a lifelong appreciation for storytelling. As a youth, Harp’s cultural experiences expanded beyond the South when his parents moved to rural New Jersey. There, in a small town named Vineland, Harp had the opportunity for some unusual life experiences.

He served, for example, as an intern at the 1964 Democratic National convention held that year in Atlantic City where he heard Bobby Kennedy eulogize his brother, President John F. Kennedy. He also became a high school track star, which eventually let to his participation in the Olympic Invitational at Madison Square Garden in New York. His running ability led to an athletic scholarship to American University in Washington, D.C.

In the early 1970’s, Harp hiked and took trains all across Europe, form Lisbon, Portugal, in the south to Bodo, Norway, in the north and eighteen countries in between. After college and his European travels, he did a tour on active duty in the Marine Corps, where he was a leader of a small group of mountain and artic-trained instructors. He himself was trained at a number of bases, including Ft. Greeley, Alaska, where he lived in temperatures at fifty degrees below zero, where car dashboards broke off like dried cake icing, and where packs of wolves roamed the streets at nights.

After his stint on active duty, Harp returned to the South to attend law school at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. After graduating, he served as an assistant district attorney, where he prosecuted felonies. In one murder trial, he obtained a guilty verdict after a mere twelve minutes of deliberations. The victim’s mother cried in his arms in appreciation.

Harp left the criminal prosecution field to become a civil trial attorney, and has participated in cases in more than eight states, from Texas to Florida. His practice has largely involved the representation of injured railroad workers.

During his legal career, Harp has also written for several professional publications. One article, co-written with a Harvard physician, was described by the medical journal’s editor as one of the decade’s leading articles on catastrophic brain and spinal cord injury care.

While building a successful career in law, he was also succeeding in another career-the United States Marine Corps Reserve. During nearly thirty years spent in the Reserves, Harp rose to the level of Colonel and served in the Persian Gulf, Central America, Europe, Korea, and the Pentagon. He was mobilized for “Operation Enduring Freedom” – the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan – where he was the Officer in Charge of the Marines’ Crisis Action Team for Marine Forces Central Command and Marine Forces Pacific.

He lives with his wife in Columbus, Georgia. They have four children.