Memorial Day Weekend does more than welcome summer with parades, picnics and pool openings. Begun as a sacred day of remembrance at cemeteries where our war dead rest, the holiday has expanded to honor all veterans, including those still on active duty.     What better way to honor these veterans than to tell their stories?

Each graduation is an epic, bursting with stories of human aspiration, frustration, perseverance and sweat. Here are two, intertwined.     Dawn Rasmussen and her daughter Courtney Stewart shared the Anne Arundel Community College stage on May 24. At 19 and just two years out of high school, Courtney had the easier journey to commencement, with her mother and grandmother pushing and cheering her all the way.

Charlie Heller flipped on the television to unwind after a long day.     The Tonight Show Host Jay Leno was luring University of Michigan students into showing their ignorance. When was World War II? Who was President during the war? When Leno asked, “Who were the Allies?” one student answered that the U.S. and the Germans teamed up against the Russians.     Heller nearly fell off his chair.

Mothers have always worked. Over the eons of human history, before this century, 99 percent of mothers had no choice over the terms of their work: They did as survival dictated for their time and place. It’s where, when and how mothers work that have changed.     The stay-at-home, cookie-baking Mom was created in America’s booming post-World War II economy. The role fit Lois Cynewski perfectly, as you’ll read in our reports on three mothers of that era.

Janet Luby, the woman behind Bay Theatre Company, is a little surprised to see her brainchild reach double digits. It’s not as if she expected her effort to bring professional theatre to Annapolis to fail.     “The idea of its not working out didn’t even factor in,” she says. “Anything is possible.”     In Bay Theatre Company’s 10 years, most anything that could happen, did.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Bay Weekly’s uber birthday cake was generously provided by confectionary phenom Christopher Yapur of Select Confections in Annapolis.     In business since 2010, Yapur combines his self-taught baking talents with artistic flare creating custom cakes and cupcakes, while also catering.     At a mere 24 years old, Yapur has honed his sweet craft of ice cream-making and baking, opening dozens of Coldstone Creamery’s.

It’s business as usual at the Pasadena Senior Center, until Mary Ann Jung walks in waving a knife.     “Julia Child presents the chicken sisters,” Jung trills in Child’s unmistakable accent. Whipping the coverlet off a table, she reveals raw chickens of several sizes.

James Barrett of Westin Annapolis is up for Maryland Chef of the Year What does it take to be Maryland’s Chef of the Year?         A concoction like this: The broth is daffodil yellow, screaming of spring, contradicting the misconception that chicken and dumplings is reserved for the cold of winter. Instead of big risen pillows, the dumplings are clever little Italian gnocchi. The geometrical cuts of ­chicken, moist all the way through, have seared surfaces.

Sunday, March 4, a thousand men and women lined up to run the Annapolis Striders’ B&A Trail Marathon. Among them, 71-year-old Minnesotan Don Wright stood poised to begin his 63rd marathon in 44 states.     Only six states stand between Wright and his goal to complete a marathon in all 50 states.