A hundred people gathered at Willow Brook Christian Village Monday afternoon to celebrate Belvadell Sidlinger’s 104th birthday.

Amid music, laughter and cookies, folks lined up to give this beloved resident of Willow Brook’s two Delaware communities their best wishes and hopes for more birthdays to come. Belvadell was the very first resident of the new apartments at Delaware Run in 2009. She moved to Willow Brook Christian Village a few months ago.

Her friends, family and neighbors old and new celebrated with her Monday.

She is a retired teacher who even last school year volunteered as a special tutor for elementary students at Schultz Elementary School. Other volunteer tutors from Willow Brook at Delaware Run related stories of how she helped them become more effective in their voluntary capacity, and related the amazement of the children to have someone more than 100 years old helping them learn to read and do math.

“Anybody with a lot of luck and the right genes can live to be 104,” Willow Brook CEO Larry Harris told her, “but today we are celebrating the beautiful, loving spirit that you have shown the world for 104 years.”