Sally Martin, and her 100 trips around the sun

Sally Martin has been around the block a time or two. In fact, she’s made 100 trips around the sun. And what a ride it’s been.

“I guess I’m just curious about the world,” said Sally. “I’m always wondering what the next page is going to be.”  

On June 11, Sally officially became a centenarian. Born in Berkeley, California, just before the Great Depression, she has seen her share of change over the past century. Recalling major world events intertwined with her own personal story — like graduating high school just weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that launched the U.S. into World War II, living in Hawaii before it was a state, or residing in rural Alabama during the rise of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement.  

While studying history at the University of Berkeley, Sally happened upon a path that would ultimately become her life’s work. “I decided to take a class in social work for some easy credit hours,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking of it in terms of a career, but you could get a master’s degree if you took some courses and could commit yourself. I wasn’t really cut out for academia, but I decided to try it anyway.”

Sally started her career in social work in Marin County, near Berkeley, saying, “I loved it. I just really took to it, like a duck to water.” Sally’s career would take her to Hawaii with the Red Cross and then a brief stint in Guam where her husband Joe Martin worked for the Federal Aviation Administration. After working abroad for several years, Sally and her husband moved back to the mainland for his work in air traffic control, settling first in rural Alabama near the epicenter of the civil rights movement, before moving on to Savannah, Georgia.  

“I loved Savannah, it’s a lovely town,” Sally said. “It’s a great place and I worked there in family counseling before we moved to Greenville, South Carolina.”

Sally retired from her job as head of the welfare department in Greenville at the age of 66, before deciding it was time to get her PhD. “My father wanted all his kids to get PhDs and when I was a little toddler and used to go all around with him, he would joke about how I was going to be the president of Bryn Mawr College (an Ivy League school near Philadelphia) someday.”  

Sally moved to Ardenwoods in 2019 at the request of family who lives nearby. “My daughter said she wanted to retire to Asheville, so that is how I came to Ardenwoods,” said Sally. “I love it here. There is such a sense of community that is really special.”

Sally has some pretty simple advice for reaching the century milestone.  “I always said it was good genes!” She said, “I had a mother who was never well and a father who was never sick, and I could have gone either direction, but I took after him.”