Lissa Galluccio still remembers the time in driver’s ed when she ran over someone’s skateboard after letting off the brake at a stop. She went from overconfident 16-year-old to “freaking out,” she said. But her instructor, Bill Timmins, kept his cool and turned it into a simple lesson she’s never forgotten — don’t let off the brake while stopped.
That patient, unflappable approach has made Timmins an institution as he enters 55 years teachingn drivers ed at Cambridge Public Schools. Timmins has taught thousands of new drivers and has the “perfect personality” for dealing with teenagers, Galluccio said. And he’s engaged with them — Galluccio, a family liaison with the Cambridge Public School system, said even now, decades later, if Timmins sees her while driving around with his students, he has them stop so he can say hello.
He also makes regular appearances at the annual Galluccio Associates Youth Sports Volunteer Recognition Breakfast run by her family. “He’s just so devoted to the city’s kids, and everyone feels it,” said Galluccio. Her brother Anthony, former Cambridge mayor and state senator, also had Timmins as a driving instructor back in 1984. Anthony doesn’t remember much about the lessons — he jokes that he took drivers ed to meet girls — but said of Timmins, “he is just the nicest man in the world, and everyone loves him.”
Along for the ride
Timmins let Cambridge Day ride along on a lesson this summer. When he started teaching Cambridge youth how to navigate the city’s claustrophobic streets back in the 1970s, the driving program used Plymouths. Now, lessons happen in a red Toyota Prius.
As a driver’s ed student turned the Prius left onto one of Cambridge’s many convoluted T-junctions, he gently coached her: “First part is the movement, and the second part is where the accelerator comes in. The golden rule is usually you only need to turn the wheel for about 50% or 75% of the angle.”
Timmins noted today’s drivers face new challenges while navigating city streets, especially reckless cyclists and delivery drivers on mopeds. He tells his students, “If you can drive in Cambridge, you can drive anywhere.”
A better-paying job
Timmins grew up in Boston and got a bachelor’s degree in history from Boston State College in 1968, and that same year, a job in the Roxbury public schools. A relative tipped him off about better-paying jobs teaching driver’s ed in Cambridge, and he soon got a job at Rindge Tech.
At the time, he thought driver’s ed was better suited to someone who “might have been ready to retire.” But he kept teaching it even after he got a job as a health teacher at the school. Timmins headed several health initiatives such as efforts against teenage alcohol consumption and reinforcing safe-sex practices during the AIDS epidemic. After the merger of Rindge with Cambridge Latin School in 1977, Timmins expanded his work in the school community, becoming a class advisor. The class of 1983 in their yearbook called him “deeply admired and respected” and credited their success to his “dedicated work.”
For Marjorie Decker, Timmins was an early nurturer of her political life. At CRLS, Decker, who recently won a seventh term as a state representative, took part in student-led efforts to bring more information to the school about HIV and AIDS, passing out educational materials, and securing 1,500 condoms to help promote safe sex. At the time, the students were “caught in the middle” of the School Committee and CRLS principal, Decker said, but Timmins supported them, and “never made it feel like we were doing something wrong.”
She added that “He was also my drivers ed teacher, and that was probably more anxiety-producing for him.”
In the late 1990’s, he worked with Just A Start, a Cambridge nonprofit, to create Challenge Prep, an alternative learning program for high school kids in the area. “Cambridge has, for a long time, had a philosophy of ‘there’s always a right placement for somebody’ and some individuals survive better in a smaller setting,” Timmins said.
Outside of academics, Timmins also coached football for nearly 30 years, leading CRLS to its first winning season ever. In 1998, he was named Division One Football Coach of the Year. He served on the inaugural selection boards of the CRLS Athletic Hall of Fame.
Through it all and then after he retired from classroom teaching in 2005, he kept teaching driver’s ed.
The new rules of the road
In the Prius in August, Timmins occasionally corrected and guided his students in a gentle but direct manner. Timmins said his experience as a coach serves as the foundation for how he now teaches. “You need your eyes in coaching, because you can get a lot of information,” he said. “But you also need to know how to get [your lessons] across to kids so they understand and absorb them.”
Timmins said cell phone technology gives him some concern, but he also thinks it helps teenagers “make decisions early.”
“They have to decide how they’re going to handle the phone, and some do it very well, while others don’t do it at all,” he said. He sometimes catches students using their devices during their lessons, though he stressed that he always handles such lapses “gently.”
Both students on the ride-along agreed that this temperament makes Timmins stand out as an educator. Liam, a junior at CRLS, said his friends at other driving schools “are just learning how to drive. I feel like [with Timmins] it’s a bit more personal, and I can actually learn more about the area I am driving in.”
Timmins never expected to stay with the driving school for so long. When he started at Rindge Tech, his wife, Mary, was on maternity leave, and the extra money helped pay for “Pampers and formula.” A grandfather now, he recalled that one of his close friends, fellow retired Cambridge educator Frank McCarthy, asked him for years why he was still a driving instructor. Eventually, he answered.
“Two weddings and a roof,” he said, explaining that the work had allowed him to put on two “wonderful” weddings for his sons, and purchase a new roof for his home in East Arlington.
He’s not sure when he’ll put the brake on giving lessons. Until then, he’ll be the best GPS a new driver can have.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.