Gloria Overall, 86, CIA secretary, performer

When Gloria Overall was a teenager, she was — quite unexpectedly — asked to play an accordion solo for President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

It was in the late 1930s and FDR was visiting his home in Warm Springs, where he went swimming as part of the treatment for his polio. Mrs. Overall was a teenager and a member of a school marching band playing for the president. During a lull in the day’s events, her music teacher asked Mrs. Overall to play a solo for the president, said her son Mark Saunders of Waldorf, Md.

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Family

In the 1970s, Gloria Overall worked for the CIA.

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Gloria Overall, here about 16, got to play accordion for President Franklin Roosevelt. She wasn’t shy, a longtime friend said.

She quickly decided to play “Home on the Range,” a song she knew to be one of FDR’s favorites, he said.

“She was about 5 or 6 feet away and it was very exciting. She was a great admirer of his,” he said.

Mrs. Overall, 86, of Atlanta died Monday of organ failure at Hospice Atlanta. The funeral will be 11 a.m. Thursday at A.S. Turner & Sons Funeral Home, which is in charge of arrangements.

Mrs. Overall lived most of her life in a home her parents bought in the early 1930s in Druid Hills. Her mother had been a publicist for Gloria Swanson, and named her daughter after the film actress.

Mrs. Overall attended North Avenue Presbyterian School, today known as Westminster. She was a cousin of John Marsh, the second husband of Margaret Mitchell, who wrote “Gone With the Wind,” but never met the author, her son said.

As a youngster, she learned to play the accordion and piano by ear and would play the accordion at nursing homes.

She particularly delighted in playing “Dixie” in facilities that housed Civil War veterans. Some of the veterans would stand and salute, her son said.

Mrs. Overall was a very outgoing person who wasn’t afraid to be the center of attention, said her longtime friend Katherine Barr, who met her while at North Avenue Presbyterian School.

“She really didn’t mind getting up in front of people,” said Ms. Barr of Atlanta.

Mrs. Overall worked as a civilian employee at Fort McPherson during World War II. She also was a secretary at Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta before becoming a secretary in the office of security for the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington in the 1970s, her son said.

At the CIA, one of her duties was picking up correspondence at post office boxes through the city that had been mailed by agents overseas, both American and foreign, her son said. She retired in 1990 and returned to her home in Atlanta.

Additional survivors include her husband, Milton Overall of Atlanta; a daughter, Suzanne Warenzak of Conyers; a son, Brian Saunders of Sugar Hill; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.