Alpha Omicron Pi was founded on January 2, 1897, at the home of Helen St. Clair (Mullan). She and three of her Barnard College friends, Stella George Stern (Perry), Jessie Wallace Hughan, and Elizabeth Heywood Wyman had pledged themselves to the organization on December 23, 1896. That first pledging ceremony took place in a small rarely used upstairs room in the old Columbia College Library.
Alpha Omicron Pi’s Founders
Katrina Overall (McDonald) was a member of a local organization, Alpha Alpha, at Vanderbilt University. With the help of Mary D. Houston (Sarratt), a member of the Alpha Omicron Pi chapter at the University of Tennessee, the Alpha Alphas became the Nu Omicron Chapter of Alpha Delta Pi on April 28, 1917. It was the third national sorority at Vanderbilt. Katrina Overall was one of its charter members.
In 1918, she graduated with high honors from Vanderbilt and took a teaching job in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. On October 9, 1919, she married Lieutenant Carl C. McDonald in Nashville, Tennessee. The engagement announcement in the Nashville paper added this information, “Possibly no one in the powder plant rendered greater service during the epidemic of influenza last winter than Miss Overall.” The couple settled in the groom’s hometown of Bay St. Louis.
From 1921-1923, Katrina Overall McDonald served Alpha Omicron Pi as District Superintendent over the Southern chapters. In 1923, she became Grand Treasurer and served in that position for two years. When she the helm as Grand President in 1925, the first two of the couple’s four sons were three and one years old. A highlight of her term must have been when she paid a visit to her chapter during Vanderbilt’s Semi Centennial.
McDonald served as Grand President until 1927. During her term she installed the Kappa Omicron Chapter at Southwestern University (now Rhodes College) in 1925. After her term was over, she installed the Alpha Pi Chapter at Florida State on May 6, 1928. The installation happened a day later than planned due to McDonald being in a train wreck on the way to Tallahassee.
She lived the rest of her life in Bay St. Louis. She was actively involved in community service, serving on school boards and the state wide Parent Teacher’s Association, among other organizations. She died on December 13, 1985, at the age of 88.
