Allan M. Crew

Eight Bells for Allan Crew.

Allan Crew, 91, passed peacefully in his sleep on February 4, 2025 with his two sons by his side.

Allan was born in Saint Helier Parish on the Island of Jersey in the English Channel.  Growing up in Chiswick, England, Allan enjoyed photography, using the coal cellar as a darkroom.  He liked to go dancing and took ballroom classes, showing off his fancy steps in the breakfast room.  Allan loved to ride his motorbike, leaning so far into curves that his foot pegs sent sparks down the road.  He won many cups and prizes rowing for the Thames Valley Skiff Club.  Allan always loved being on the water and later shared that joy with his sons through fishing and his passion for sailboat racing.  Allan was extremely competitive and didn’t even like to be passed walking down the street.  He once remarked that if you think people walk fast in New York, you should see them in Brighton!

When Allan was fifteen, he went to work for airplane manufacturer Vickers-Armstrong, which made bombers.  The company sent him to school one day a week for seven years until Allan went into engineering and trained as a Tool and Die machinist with Wilkinson-Sword and Veite & Young.  At age twenty-five, Allan and his wife moved to Windsor, Canada in the late 1950s then moved back to England to have their first child, Philip, then later settled with his young family in the Philadelphia area in the 1960s.  Allan worked for 40 years at NEMCO in Feasterville, PA.  He was a Senior Vice President until his retirement in 2012.  Retirement did not sit well with Allan so he became manager of an office center in Bristol, PA.

Allan could build and fix anything.  He built his first sailboat, a 19’ Lightning, by hand in the 1960s, working on it near Philadelphia until it was ready to race at the Riverton Yacht Club.  Allan renovated a summer cottage into a two-story house for his family in New Hope, PA in the 1970s.  Allan was one of the core sailors in the Riverton Lightning fleet for more than 55 years, racing from 1963 through 2018, and was Commodore from 1998 to 2000.  Allan and his wife, Diana, raced together for many years and made a great team.  Allan’s Lightning victories include, among others, the Magnus Pederson Regatta at the Nyack Boat Club and the New Jersey State Championships.  Allan was well-known and respected in the dozens of sailing clubs where he and Diana competed.  Many of the sailors who crewed with Allan on the Toodle-oo, and his three Lightnings prior to that, became good friends and fluent in British sailing jargon.

Allan was preceded in death by his father, Edward, his mother Marguerite and his brother Maurice.  Allan is survived by his wife Diana, sons Philip(Melissa) of Dallas, TX and Darren(Lily) of Virginia, stepdaughter Stefanie(Mike) of Laurel Springs, NJ, stepson Ed(Maria) of Woodstock, GA, grandchildren Madeleine, Jack, Cameron, Kenneth, Sofia and Gianna, first wife (mother of Philip and Darren) and sister Pauline Redfern of West Sussex, England.

In lieu of flowers, please send donations to the Alzheimer’s Association (alz.org/nj) in honor of his wife, Diana Crew.

Details of a Celebration of Life will be forthcoming.