‘She Was Everyone’s Grandmother’: Kay Timmis, 82, Beloved Substitute Teacher in New Canaan

The New Canaan High School family is mourning the passing on Sunday of a beloved substitute teacher who began working in the district in the late-1970s and touched hundreds of young lives here with her rare and unflagging kindness, smile and generous spirit.

Kay Timmis was 82.

“We started off first period with a lot of tears” as news of Timmis’ passing moved quickly through the school, NCHS World History, Civics and AP Comparative Government and Politics teacher Kristine Goldhawk said Tuesday.

“Kay was an original,” added Goldhawk, in her ninth year in the district and who saw Timmis just last week. “She was a sweetheart. She was everyone’s grandmother.”

Born Mary Kay Longenecker on Aug. 27, 1932 in Pittsburgh, she was a child of the Great Depression who would carry memories of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “fireside chat” radio addresses through World War II for her entire life, according to her son, Chris Timmis, himself a 1979 New Canaan High School graduate.

Going by “Kay,” she grew up in Pennsylvania as well as Colorado and Florida as the family moved around—her father was in the military—and graduated from Mt. Lebanon High School in Mt. Lebanon, Penn. She went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in English from Northwestern University in 1954, Chris said.

She worked as a stewardess for Pan Am and married John Timmis within a few years. After her husband found work in New York City, the couple moved to New Canaan and raised a family. They had five children: Scot, Jeff, Chan, Kim (also remembered by many of us as a terrific substitute teacher) and Chris.

“She had a unique makeup,” Chris said of his mom, adding with a laugh: “She was better than every kid she put on the planet. She was just a great person, my mom was just a person—when I think about her—she was someone who lived, who traveled the world. She was a globe-trotter, hit six out of seven continents and probably over 70 countries. She lived a good life. I guess it’s always a shock when you lose a parent. It’s even more so in this case, considering her vitality.”

She decided to take in some extra cash for the family and in the late 1970s took up substitute teaching, a job she would carry on through the rest of her life. And it was a job she loved because she “relished being around people,” Chris said, especially young people.

At Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi took a moment to mark her passing and “to acknowledge Kay’s contribution to us for decades and that she leaves a very fond legacy here at New Canaan High School.” Click here to read a touching tribute in the Courant student newspaper bearing the headline “NCHS Sweetheart Kay Timmis Passes.”

“She was unique,” Chris said of his mom. “She had a great, optimistic viewpoint of life. My brother said it best: She lived her life and had no fear of living. She certainly had opinions about the way the world worked, but she didn’t judge people and was a very forgiving person. She gave people the benefit of the doubt. That was a very important characteristic of her. She was very open to everything—a very open-minded person and she didn’t judge anything. She was not a religious person per se, but I would say she was as spiritual as anyone who ever lived. There was an energy and zest for life that emanated from her.”

And it rubbed off on others.

New Canaan High School class of 1984 graduate Tony Psenicnik, who works as TV studio technician at the high school, knew “Mrs. Timmis” as a substitute teacher at Center School all the way through high school, and then came to know her as a sort of colleague.

“I just remember she was one of the favorite subs,” Psenicnik recalled. “She was fun, very nice. Later, I helped her out when she had problems—because substitutes always show videos—so she’d call me up, ‘Hey the VCR’s not working!’ and I’d always go up and get it started. She always seemed like she was happy. She liked the kids. She had a good time with the kids.”

Kay and John Timmis later divorced and she would live in different towns in the area, including Pound Ridge, Westport and Rowayton, her son said. Throughout Kay’s life and into her golden years, travel was her principle passion, Chris said, and she also loved nature, gardening, paddle tennis, bridge, cooking and reading.

“She had a voracious reading appetite, probably read a book a week,” he said. “It was another way that she stayed active. She loved sports, was a fanatical, huge fan of all sports—football, basketball, baseball. She liked the Yankees. She grew up near Pittsburgh so she had an affinity for the Steelers but she also liked the Bears because she lived in Chicago for a time, and then toward the end of her life she adopted the Green Bay Packers because she loved Aaron Rodgers.”

She was also a huge tennis fan who counted Rod Laver and Roger Federer among her all-time favorite players.

Self-effacing and modest, Kay left specific instructions that no one was to fuss over her after she had passed, no memorial service, Chris said—though it’s possible a remembrance of some kind will be planned.

Immediately since hearing news of Kay’s passing, Goldhawk said that ideas have been floated around about ways to honor her memory at the high school. For example, since she was an avid gardener and lover of books (“She would always come to the library and talk to the librarians and library aides to talk about the good books to read”), one inchoate plan involves combining those two interests by planting a tree or something similar in the long garden behind the library, out back of the school.

In recent years, Kay substituted at both Saxe and the high school, so many of the seniors at NCHS now have known her for eight years and “for a lot of them this was their first close touch with death,” Goldhawk said.

“What we were doing today was remembering all the good things about her,” she said.

Kay’s ability to engage with the students led to “real, personal relationships” with them, Goldhawk said, to the extent that many kids lovingly claimed her as their own.

“I think you would probably have a fight between the high school and Saxe as to who loved her more—and quite frankly, I don’t think you can win that one,” she said. “She is going to be sorely missed. It is a huge void and I don’t know how or if we will ever be in a position to fill it, because she’s a one-of-a-kind lady.”