In more than a century, one of Elise Martin's most memorable highlights has been the time she stood face to face with then-Sen. Barack Obama during his first presidential campaign in 2008 when she was captain of her voting precinct in South Carolina. Martin put her finger in his chest and told him, "You can do this."

Martin was 93, and there's a photo to prove the encounter.

Not long after, "Mama Lise," as she is called by her grandchildren, moved to Palo Alto to live with her daughter. Now, 15 years later, she still picks up the phone to talk politics with former council members, mayors or other key political players from her hometown in South Carolina.

On Feb. 7, Martin, who lives in Palo Alto's Greenmeadow neighborhood with her daughter Loretta Green and son-in-law, Bill, celebrated her 108th birthday surrounded by family, including her son Montez Martin Jr., who traveled from Charleston for the milestone.

"People ask her, 'What's your secret,'" Green said in a telephone interview on her mother's birthday. "She says, 'If I knew, I would bottle it and sell it.'"

Martin was born in 1915 in the small town of Hartsville, South Carolina. Her parents, along with Elise and her four siblings, were struck with the 1918 Spanish flu. Her father died, as did a younger sister. Her mother, a talented seamstress, took on the mending and wardrobe-making for three wealthy families to support her children.

At the encouragement of her mother, Martin went to cosmetology school as a young adult and became the owner of Elise Beauty Shop in the then-segregated South. Her baby daughter, Loretta, took up residence in a playpen in the second-story shop as Martin served Black women, who came for miles, even on Saturdays, lining her stairway for walk-in hours. She shampooed hair and used hot curling irons — heated on gas stoves — to ready women for work or for Sunday morning church. Martin eventually earned her teaching credential and taught cosmetology at the local high school.

Meanwhile, Martin's husband, Montez, worked unloading trucks with boxes of tiles for Sears Roebuck after the company refused him a position as tile-layer because he was Black, Martin's family said. He ended up learning how to lay tiles from co-workers on the side and eventually opened his own company.

To this day, Martin is passionate about schools offering students courses in "the trades."

"She feels strongly that schools should," said Green, a retired journalist and columnist who wrote for the Palo Alto Times Tribune and the San Jose Mercury News.

Green said her mother "thrives on people. She's a person who can work the room. She loves talking to people."

To help Martin mark her birthday, a drive-by celebration (to keep Mama Lise free of COVID-19) is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 12, from noon to 12:45 p.m. on Greenmeadow Way. Residents are encouraged to drive by and give Martin a birthday shout-out.