Disappointment and criticisms
“It is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the bitter disappointment each of you has in your own way dished out to us. We are seeing the miserable death throes of the fourth of your collective marriages at the same time we see the advent of a fifth,” Crews wrote.
He criticizes them for failed marriages, lack of maturity and their inability to provide for their children.
“Fulfilling careers based on your educations would have helped — but as yet none of you is what I would confidently term properly self-supporting,” he continued.
Inability to provide for their children
“Each of you is well able to earn a comfortable living and provide for your children, yet each of you has contrived to avoid even moderate achievement. Far from your children being able to rely on your provision, they are faced with needing to survive their introduction to life with you as parents.
“The predictable result has been a decade of deep unhappiness over the fates of our grandchildren,” Crews wrote.
“If it wasn’t for them, Mum and I would not be too concerned, as each of you consciously, and with eyes wide open, crashes from one cock-up to the next.”
Sick of hearing complaints and failures
Crews said that he and his wife were sick of hearing their children complaints and failures. The children are 35, 38 and 40.
He wrote that he did not want to hear from his children again until they had good news.
“I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about.”
His last sentence before signing the letter was, “I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed.”
The email goes viral
Crews sent the email to his children in February. His eldest daughter Emily Crews, 40, recently asked him whether she could make the email public in order to create some buzz while she works on a book about starting over.
"I haven't done well as a father, have I?"
The former commander has since told London’s Telegraph that he does not regret sending the email, but fears it might have been misinterpreted.
“It wasn’t meant as a furious dressing-down; more like a finger raised to my lips in church, when I spotted them picking their nose or scratching their bottom, down the pew from me,” he said.
“I was trying to express my frustration at these wonderful grown-ups who had yet to make the best of what they had. They have read the criticism, but not seen the enduring love through the lines.”
After a short pause, he added, “I haven’t done well as a father, have I?”
Eldest daughter speaks out
Emily Crews is reportedly the only one out of the three children still speaking to her father after receiving the letter.
“It was horrendous receiving that email from my father,” she told London’s Daily Mail.
“What he said in his email was quite correct, but I don’t think it was the right kind of support or the kick up the backside he intended it to be. I think he has created a monster out of the worst of us and ignored the best.”
Sources:
‘Bitterly’ Disappointed Dad’s Email to Children Goes Viral
I haven’t done well as a father, have I? Softer side of the man who fired off ‘Crews missile’
‘I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed’: retired naval officer’s email to children in full