A full grin spread across the face of Stuart “Boot” Gordon every time a visitor stopped to wish him a happy birthday.

Boot — a beloved World War II veteran, author and artist — celebrated his 101st birthday with a party at his “foam dome” castle in Silverthorne, Friday, March 28. The party, a potluck, was 101 Dalmatians themed and Boot, dressed in a black-and-white polka-dotted onesie, had invited the Summit County community to join in the festivities.

“The big thing is, I’m laughing,” Boot said, surrounded by friends, family and faces new and old. “I like to laugh.”

A decades-long Summit County resident, Boot built his “house of the future” along the Blue River in 1973, bending the rebar into place, spraying it with foam and applying a layer of concrete himself.

The life of the party, Boot laughed and chatted as visitors climbed the tower that spirals out of the roof of the home, explored the nooks and crannies of its curved shapes and wandered the still-snow covered gardens, where a bonfire was blazing.

“Dude, he’s just getting more vibrant with age. I don’t know if that sounds crazy or not,” Thomas Dempsey, a friend of Boot’s who has rented space on his property for the past decade. “He’s the only 101 (year old) person I know, but he’s also the best 101 (year old) person I know. I think the key with his aging is he always stays busy, and at times of stress he knows how to laugh.”

At 101, Boot is still scheming and isn’t slowing down anytime soon. He’s a man with a plan — or several plans. Boot credits his longevity with his love for activity and art. When he was younger, he said he always had plans, and that’s never changed, he said.

“I made a to-do list, a bucket list, of all the things I wanted to get old and die,” Boot said. “One of them was to swim in the Atlantic and the Pacific, and go up in an air balloon and fly an airplane and go on the ocean and visit the Great Wall of China and see the Taj Mahal and see the Pyramids and all these things. Well, I’ve done all that, see.”

He continued, “But now my other to-do list is to build a ski area so kids can go out there in the outdoors. I want to build this little chapel so that people will become more spiritual, and I want to build this town so that people will love one another and be creative. My second bucket list is all about helping others.”

Boot’s youngest daughter, Jane Gordon-Westcott, said it’s hard to put into words how much she loves her father. Describing her father as “this combination of a Boy Scout, a fighter pilot and a Dick Van Dyke, she said that Boot’s “joy of life” has always made her proud of him, and it rubs off on everyone he interacts with.

“​​They say those connections as people get older, if they make a lot of connections that’s what keeps them young,” Gordon-Westcott said. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who’s so gregarious and loves people and wants to connect with as many people as possible.”

Boot’s middle daughter, Teresa Matthews, said that later in the night, her father plans to get everyone gathered around the bonfire so he can tell them jokes about “How to become 101,” inspired by his life. Examples include, “When you’re 16, hitchhike to be a logger in Idaho,” and “Be a fighter pilot. Nine out of 10 people die.”

Summing up her father’s life, Matthews said, “Dad always says beauty is godlike and every human should aspire.”