Carmel Furtado is looking forward to spending Father’s Day with her dad.

Ms Furtado, who lives in Vermont, says that one of her greatest memories was when her father, Frank Furtado, first brought her to Bermuda when she was only five years old.

“He was so happy to be back on the Island that he was yelling out the car window on the ride from the airport to my grandmother’s house.

“A woman rode by on the back of a man’s moped and he yelled, ‘Put your shoes on Lizzie’.

“I didn’t understand — he was just so joyful.”

Often on Valentines Day her father would buy her a present and he used to take her out with him with him on Saturday afternoons.

“He used to buy me shoes at Gimbel’s where he worked,” she said.

“His sense of style was off, but his heart was in the right place.”

He was always full of fun and often went the extra mile to ensure that his little girl was happy.

“Once he walked back into a restaurant to retrieve my imaginary friend that I believed I had left behind,” she said.

“He made a show of going to the table and grabbing it by the hand and walking it back out of the room.”

As for favourite sayings, she said: “He doesn’t really have a saying, other than ‘yes dear’.”

Over the years, their relationship was not what it could have been, but they always kept the lines of communication open.

“There was a long period when the relationship was strained, but we never quite stopped talking to each other,” said Ms Furtado.

“The best thing I could do was to stop blaming him, taking responsibility for my own actions and to start telling him that I loved him.”