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Take May Brandt, whose husband, Fred, a retired college professor of philosophy and business management, is considered a “regular” at the association’s Adult Day Care Center on 14th Street in Vero Beach. It, like the center on Davis Street in Sebastian, is a veritable hub of happiness where music, dancing, art, exercising, trivia, puzzles, card and table games provide mental and physical stimulation as well as social interaction. With a 5 to 1 client-to-staff member ratio, the care and attention is extraordinary.

A seemingly limitless line of blossoms and bouquets and letters at the base of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall. The solemn wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Such images are inexorably tied to Memorial Day, originally dubbed Decoration Day, the day set aside to remember those who died while serving in our armed forces. The ancient custom of adorning with flowers the graves of those who made the ultimate sacrifice lives on, and Lincoln’s famous words from the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg echo in the background: “It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

Presiding in her third-floor courtroom at the St. Lucie County Courthouse, Judge Janet Croom’s petite frame seems almost dwarfed by her long, black judicial robe. But the attorneys who practice before her and the jurors who decide civil cases in her court soon understand her true stature.

It’s often been said that a house is a place, but a home is a feeling. Thanks largely to some pretty amazing synergy with their talented renovation team, New Yorkers Sandy and Mike ended up with a Vero Beach residence that is not only a visually stunning place, but a warm, inviting one that’s sure to make anyone who walks through the door feel welcome.

For someone who has performed six demanding one to one-and-a-half hour surgeries today, Dr. Vipul Patel seems extremely chipper as he greets me outside his state-of-the art operating theatre on the fourth floor of Florida Hospital in the Disney-designed town of Celebration. It’s just after 3 p.m. and Patel, dressed in light green surgical scrubs and brown clogs, ushers me into a nearby conference room where he explains that he has one more surgery on today’s schedule – one of the more than 1,000 that he performs each year. “It’s good to take a break,” he says as we sit down. “I started operating at seven this morning.”

Greg Hills, Australian-born photographer and now a resident of our area, visited the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea this past winter – something he’s wanted to do for years.

“It’s a slow-motion event, at least in your mind, when you go through something like this,” says Gadson. “I remember being ejected, hitting the ground and coming to a rolling stop. Then it was back to real motion and I was like, ‘I don’t know why I’m on my back and I can’t move.’ And then I just said, ‘God, I don’t want to die in this country.’”

Susanne and Doug Sweeny, Bill Hamlin and Charlene Friedman were strangers when they moved to Grand Harbor. That changed once they became involved with Grand Harbor Community Outreach Program, working together on fundraising events and eventually joining the board of directors.

From just a few feet away, Russ Hahn’s “Dutch Treat” looks like a painting of a windmill. But up close you can see words among the wood. “NEDERLAND” peeks out of the mill’s walls, and “AMSTERDAM” is a clear, white curve on an orange roof. You blink, and then you notice letters on indistinct houses and numbers in the reeds. As your eyes adjust, you realize this is no ordinary painting. In fact, it’s not a painting at all. It’s a collage of thousands of pieces of postage stamps.

Next season the Vero Beach Theatre Guild will perform “The Claypools of Vero,” Suzan’s play inspired by a chapter in her aunt Dorothy Fitch Penniston’s novel An Island in Time. The play follows Dorothy’s life in the 1920s when she came to Vero Beach with her parents. Dorothy’s parents and Suzan’s grandparents, Winchester and Florence Fitch, built “Orchid Oaks,” one of the first seven houses on the barrier island, and were among the founders of Riomar in 1919.

When you enter the galleries of the Vero Beach Museum of Art, you are just as likely to encounter a youngster sitting on a beanbag chair making art on an iPad as to see an equally absorbed adult studying a priceless painting. And you are just as likely to see a docent leading a tour of young mothers with tots in strollers as you are to see that docent conducting a tour for residents of a retirement community. While the docent may talk to the latter group about the exhibition in one way, she will engage the mothers in another way, emphasizing to them how to talk to their children about art.

Dr. Deb Walters is kayaking through icebergs. Sporting a bulky, yellow jacket and a tan hat whose wide brim reveals nothing but shadows, she wields a long paddle. One end pushes through frigid water; the other seems to point behind her, saying “Pay attention to where I’ve been.”

They say that home is where the heart is. But what if your heart is torn between two equally captivating places that lie more than 8,000 miles apart?

In the spring of each year, usually sometime after the May Pops concert, a tribe of nearly 300 migrating Vero Beachers, of which I am one, empties freezers, puts up hurricane shutters and packs up cars. A few ship their vehicles ahead via transports where Mercedes perch like acrobats. A few decide to save 800 miles and freight their cars in the Amtrak Auto Train while they ride in coach; and some, like Connie and Bob Ferguson, toss their dogs, Sadie and Emma, into the back seat of their Volvo wagon and head north to Vermont.

Owning a home in Florida was the furthest thing from Rich and Deb’s minds. To their way of thinking, the Sunshine State was for retirees who had a lot of free time on their hands. They were far too busy juggling work responsibilities and family activities. Yet after visiting friends who had discovered Vero Beach a few years earlier, the couple from Connecticut began to look at things differently.

Every year, thousands of pilgrims gather for a journey on a venerable path to a sacred and spiritual city, Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. They will be hiking, biking or riding on the ancient Camino de Santiago – The Way of St. James. Pilgrims first trod this route in the 9th century in search of the bones of the apostle James in the city’s cathedral. James, later the patron saint of Spain, had been chosen by Jesus to spread the gospel there.

As she drove through the Everglades more than 10 years ago, Viola Pace Knudsen was inspired. After examining the work of an unassuming street artist who sold pine needle baskets, Viola returned to her own backyard, surveyed her 12 evergreens, and started collecting material.

Every piece of art at the Vero Beach Museum of Art – hanging on its walls, free standing in its galleries and sculpture parks, or stored in the vault – is constantly monitored for changes. Environmental elements, even those as benign as controlled artificial light, can affect a work of art. Add factors characteristic of Vero Beach’s weather and the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean and the demands of maintaining valuable artwork in pristine condition present a multitude of challenges. The heavy lifting – both literally and figuratively – for preserving the museum’s sculptures goes to Museum Conservator James Liccione.

Our local retailers have gotten into the spirit of the invention of the calendar and timepieces and have provided a spectacular showcase of beautiful watches and clocks. Enjoy!

If you were to make a list of good stewards of the environment, golf course superintendents might not immediately come to mind