JFK's oldest and best friend was Kirk LeMoyne Billings, known as "Lem." The two became fast friends in prep school and, after graduation, they traveled to Europe together. His name was Lem Billings. Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings (April 15, 1916 - May 28, 1981) was a close friend of the Kennedy family, who had his own room at the White House during the Kennedy presidency. A new book is claiming that John F. Kennedy had more than just a platonic friendship with his life-long gay best friend, Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings. Jack, meanwhile, drew on Billings' unerring presence in his life by his side in sickness and on the campaign trail and even at the White House, where Billings had a room (and where there were at least whispers among the staff about the truth of his personal relationships). I'm not that kind of boy.' I was pleased to note that things picked up after your arrival,' referring to Montgomery's battle with Rommel at El Alamein. With that out of the way, their relationship continued essentially unchanged until JFK's assassination thirty years later.". Jerry Oppenheimer is a New York Times bestselling author who has written two books about the Kennedys. When they arrived at the cemetery, it was already in place to be lowered. They were bound together by a love of fun and practical jokes, resentment of Choate, and envy of their higher-achieving elder siblings -- Joe, Jack's brother, and Josh, Lem's brother." Like the rest of the free world, Billings was devastated when President Kennedy was assassinated. Lem Billings relaxed on the Kennedys' Palm Beach estate the summer of 1936. After Jack Kennedy's election to the presidency, Billings was a constant presence and overnight guest at the White House. He remained close with various family members, most notably Robert F. Kennedy Jr., though there was a dark side: Peter Collier and David Horowitz's The Kennedys: An American Drama for which Billings gave a number of interviews describes him descending into drug use in connection with his relationship with a young Bobby Kennedy (who had well documented drug issues himself). Harvard University. One of their friends thought "that Jackie was trying to close Lem out. Claire Potter is professor of history at The New School, and Executive Editor of Public Seminar. cause of death. [14] In 1958, he moved to the Manhattan advertising firm Lennen & Newell[15] as an advertising executive. John F. Kennedy's best friend for three decades was a gay man, according to a new book titled, "Jack and Lem: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings.The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship;" the book documents the relationship between the two men from its beginnings at a New England prep school in 1933 until the gunfire in Dallas in 1963. "He needed Lem Billings to get around better than a trained nurse" that would have made his political career impossible. Still, the Kennedy clan accepted even welcomed Lem Billings into their exclusive inner-circle, practically adopting him, and he became a part of the family. "I'm sure he's already organizing everything in heaven so it will be completely ready for us with just the right Early American furniture, the right curtains, the right rugs, the right paintings," Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the president's sister, said in a eulogy. But the point of the picture is the grief any couple would feel at the loss of a much-wanted child. Criticisms from others in the Kennedy orbit insinuate that Jack took advantage of Lem's love for him without reciprocating. It impressed . [16], On September 12, 1953, Billings was an usher at the wedding of Kennedy and Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. "Because of him," Lem Billings once said of President Kennedy, "I was never lonely" The Kennedy Curse" Episode 205 -- Pictured: Grant Logan as JFK, Adam Cropper as Lem Billings -- John F. Kennedy, "Dunker" the dog, and Lem Billings at the Hague, during their Europe trip. Collier and Horowitz described Billings, later in life, as invariably enmeshed in his late friend's larger family. We are a non-profit organization, wholly supported by The New School, and by the generosity of our sponsors and readers. According to Pitts, Billings never recovered from the death of his friend, suffering from a "deep depression" in the weeks and months after President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The two had been friends since meeting as teenagers in prep school, and Billings even had his own room in the White House, but were they merely friends? July 24, 2015. Lem felt that the physical regimen at the Kennedy vacation homes was even more exacting than that at Choate. From the time John F. Kennedy and Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings met at Choate, until the President's assassination thirty years later, Jack and Lem remained best friends. Billings had once told Bobby that when he died he wanted the pall-bearers to be members of Bobby's circle of young friends, whom he knew well and with whom he had done drugs. A funny photo of Senator John McCain catching himself after he nearly left the stage in the wrong direction after shaking hands with Senator Barack Obama. Wikipedia (3 entries) edit. I really got to know them well. The elder Kennedys began to discourage the boys from associating with Billings because of his excessive recreational drug use (including alcohol). Billings took leave from his business career to work on Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign. But as I began to research him, I realized he was also very good friends with Jackie. In Jackies absence, Lem managed the Presidents dinner parties, social life and children. Release of Secret JFK Assassination Records Delayed by Biden, Angering Some of the Kennedys. Jack" he said as he gazed at him softly, It's been a long time. Lem Billings died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack on May 28, 1981, at the age of 65. In the epidemiological framework of the Global Burden of Disease study each death has one specific cause. As for Kennedy himself, Vidal asserted that the president 'felt quite comfortable in the company of homosexuals as long as they were smart enough to hold his interest. Naval Academy. Billings was a prep school roommate of Kennedy, an usher at his wedding and a campaigner for his successful 1960 presidential bid. Gore Vidal, the writer who claimed he viewed homosexuality as normal as heterosexuality, disparaged the JFK-Billings relationship during the Kennedy administration. [11], After working on Kennedy's successful campaign for Congress in 1946, Billings toured seven Latin American countries with Robert F. 'People think I'm a joke,' he once acknowledged. Both Jack and Lem were crazy about dogs and soon fell totally in love with little Dunker. A historian wrote that after Kennedy's assassination 50 years ago Billings was "probably the saddest of the Kennedy 'widows.'" Pictures of the first family are typical of Cold War domestic norms: widely distributed before and after his death, these photographs show him as a conventional, heterosexual husband and a devoted father. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to receive selections from new issues of, what historian David K. Johnson calls the lavender scare, According to author Christopher Bram (2012), her fictional account of the love affair between Eleanor Roosevelt. A queer perspective on JFK is not readily visible in official histories that feature iconic images and stories about one of the first administrations to offer the public ongoing access to the White Houses backstage. Lem was a virtual fixture in the Kennedy family who even had his own room at the White House. 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Kennedy Anything Including Possible Affairs, oral history interview for the John F. Kennedy Library. His latest book, The Kardashians: An American Drama, will be published in September. Bobby Kennedy Jr. read the eulogy. Billings was so much a part of the extended Kennedy clan that he was regularly included in family gatherings, and Attorney General Robert Bobby Kennedy named his son Michael LeMoyne Kennedy. Variability in proportionate mortality in 363 Latin American cities by country. It was Bobby Kennedy Jr. who gave the eulogy. To order a copy, click here. The affair was socially isolating for a very young and sexually un-liberated woman, causing her to deceive friends, boyfriends and ultimately her husband and children for most of her adult life. Kennedy later graduated from Harvard, but the pair wrote letters back and forth, spent weekends together in New York and traveled to Germany in the summer of 1937. The parents who fear their 11-year-olds will be scarred for life by the graphic sex education lessons that Two Insulate Britain protesters are jailed for contempt of court after they defied a judge's orders not to 'Derek fights on, it makes me fall in love with him all over again:' Kate Garraway reveals there are days French authorities fear 'narco-tourists' could flock to Normandy beaches after 'more than two tonnes of Hopes for cervical cancer vaccine after trials in mice showed it reduced tumours 80 per cent of the time. Billings was a longtime Kennedy family friend, working to preserve the slain president's legacy even after death. In 2009, Robert Dallek published part of an interview with Barbara Gamerekian, a former White House aide, who named three prominent women, two secretaries nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle and a college sophomore who couldnt type (Alford) as a few of the sexual partners who helped the President release his daily tensions, often in the White House swimming pool or on official trips around the nation, where women were sometimes flown in on separate planes so that they could be available. Smith, 433-4; see also: Smith, 113: "The only counterbalance to the [Kennedy] family's philistinism had been Lem Billings, whose passion for art and antiques had begun with his Princeton theses on Tintoretto, a precociously sophisticated study. Because of him, I was never lonely. His book Jack and Lem: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship, from which the text of this slideshow is excerpted, was one of The Advocate's five best books of 2007. Claire Potteris professor of history at The New School, and Executive Editor of Public Seminar. Some of his partners saw the escape from monogamy as liberating too, understanding their romps with the President as special and carefree episodes that they were happy to flaunt. place of burial. In which 20 year old John F Kennedy's best friend shows up on his doorstep one evening. Perhaps, given his deep personal knowledge of the President and his friendship with the First Lady, he even gave directions as the photographer snapped the candid shots that would charm both the nation and historians. [4], Some historians believe that Billings expressed his sexual interest in Kennedy in writing in 1934 and that Kennedy rebuffed his advances. [4] The non-sectarian, wooded hillside park is located at 4734 Butler Street in the Lawrenceville neighborhood, and bounded by the Bloomfield, Garfield, and Stanton Heights areas. Lem Billings is a well known Celebrity. In 1965, Mrs. Kennedy invited Billings to accompany her and her children to England for the unveiling of a memorial to Kennedy at Runnymede. (Page 35), Jack and Lem in a Palm Beach photo booth just before their European tour, 1937, "Jack and Lem's summer in Europe began on July 1, 1937. But this may, in fact, just be gossip. Each column is a city, with each color representing . As Vice President at the Emerson Drug Company in Baltimore, he was responsible for inventing the 1950s fad drink Fizzies by adding a fruit flavor to disguise the sodium citrate taste. They soon began spiraling toward their eventual demise. In her memoir, Times To Remember, published eleven years after Jack's assassination in Dallas in 1963, she wrote that Billings had 'remained Jack's lifelong close friend, confidant, sharer in old memories and new experiencesHe has really been part of 'our family' since that first time he showed up at our house as one of 'Jack's surprises. [28] He sat with the President's family at the Kennedy inauguration and walked not far behind his widow at the Kennedy funeral. Prince Andrew has 'offered to manage prestigious Royal estates including Balmoral but King Charles has told PLATELL'S PEOPLE: Yes, Madonna toyboys are fun but not if you value your dignity. Kennedys social intimacy with gay and bisexual men, and his comfort around homosexuality, is remarkable at a time when those friendships were stigmatizing and when gay and lesbian people were still prohibited from working on most federal jobs. Definitions: Cause of death vs risk factors. 73 Photos of Naturally Naked Men by Terry Hastings, 23 Masturbation Tips for People With Vaginas, 22 Terrifying Sexual Fantasies That Must Be Talked About, 30 Kinky Terms Every Gay Man Needs To Know, 10 Sex Toys for All Genders and How to Use Them, Alternative Orgasms: 20 New Ways to Hit the Spot, LGBTQ+ Rights Lawyer Shannon Minter's Home Hit by Tornado, 'First Deep Breath' Is a Moving Story of a Black Family & Queerness, Karine Jean-Pierre on Tennessee Anti-Drag Law: Unacceptable & Unfortunate, Texas GOP May Censure Congressman Over Support for Marriage Equality, 12 LGBTQ+ Films and TV Shows to Watch in March, The Dildo Nazi: Sex Toy-Selling White Supremacist Umasked, Lesbian Gov. I have been studying human sexuality for 25 years and am a Stanford grad and track athlete. [36] When the Kennedys spent the weekend at Glen Ora, their Virginia estate, Jacqueline Kennedy invited Billings to join them more often than the President did. One of the most credible accounts of the Kennedy-Billings relationship was told by David Pitts, who I interviewed extensively for my book, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.And The Dark Side Of The Dream, because the strapping, bespectacled Billings, with a high-pitched, effeminate voice, would later become the fawning surrogate father and fellow drug user of JFK's nephew, Bobby Kennedy Jr., with whom Billings also had intense romantic feelings. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. Allegheny Cemetery is one of the largest and oldest burial grounds in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But even before then, Billings was a Kennedy fixture. David Pitts quotes Vidal cruelly calling Billings a lifelong slave, the principal fag at court, and a nurse who helped Jack deal with the pain caused by Addisons disease. Joe generously paid for half the cost of Lem's ticket on the way over, saying Lem could pay at least part of it back when he graduated from Princeton. The comments below have been moderated in advance. Perhaps, however, Billings simply chose not to come out for his own reasons, devoting much of the rest of his life to preserving the memory of the man he loved. 0 references. "He may have been the reason I never married." This essay was originally published at OutHistory.org on November 22, 2013; it has been updated and re-edited. 'Our story is one of hope': Conjoined twins who made history as first EVER pair survive to separation As Charles Bronson faces a parole hearing on Monday Will Britain's most violent prisoner soon be painting Is this Britain's most despicable man? ', Their arrangement, Quirk asserted, 'enabled Jack to sustain his self-delusion that straight men who received oral sex from other males were really only straights looking for sexual release,' and he further observed, 'Jack was in love with Lem being in love with him and considered him the ideal follower adorer. "[27] Billings never had a White House pass and said: "Jack and Jackie were so nice about this that I didn't even have to tell them whether I was coming or going. ', White House visitor: Billings often spent the night at the White House, which upset Jackie Kennedy. But the man married to Jackie Kennedy was quietly chided for his compulsive philandering. Use Restriction Status: None. Poor guy. Lem Billings died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack on May 28, 1981, at the age of 65. Indeed, it often seems that Kennedy did treat people who loved him for granted. Lem had caught a cold in July by swimming in the Loire River at Chenonceau and Jack developed his own problems in Southampton on August 27 while saying goodbye to his mother and siblings Joe and Kick as they departed for America. 1934: Young JFK in hospital The young JFK, messing around with Lem Billings during their Choate years In the summer of 1934, future United States president John F Kennedy was in his junior year at the prestigious Choate School in Connecticut. On March 4, 1961, The New York Times reported, Billings even escorted two baby hamsters, Debbie and Billie, from New York to Washington, for young Caroline. Both men are being held in . 'It was very hard for him, but he wanted to do it and he stuck with it,' Lucretia added. A Catholic couple, the Kennedys hoped for more children: Jack had been one of nine, while Bobby and Ethel Kennedy had eleven. 'Dear Mrs. Billings. While web sleuths and conspiracy theorists were looking for the person who killed her . His mother was a Mayflower descendant and his great-grandfather Francis Julius LeMoyne was a prominent abolitionist linked to the underground railroad who helped establish what is today known as LeMoyne-Owen College. "Because of him," Billings once said. And for Lem and Mark Chesmore, there's nothing more they enjoy doing than participating in their chosen sport of boxing. [64], Billings' behavior changed drastically in the late 1960s. [49], Friends from the 1970s confirmed that Billings was homosexual, but not open to discussing it. For Jack and Lem, the carefree period of their lives -- their school and college years -- were now behind them. 'What the hell have you been doing? Bobby Kennedy Jr. gave the eulogy. Here is a look at their friendship. The 51-year-old daughter of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died Sept. 16 while working out at her Washington, D.C., gym. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy, a distraught Ethel turned over her son, Bobby Jr., to Billings to act as his surrogate father, sparking her brother-in-law, Terrien RFK's roommate at the University of Virginia law school to wonder why she would allow 'Lem to have such an intimate relationship' with her troubled third born, who would go on to have a a bizarre relationship with Billings, including the taking of drugs. Who was Jack Lemmon's wife? The bond between Billings and John F. Kennedy continues to be of interest to many, with a new wave of attention cresting on social media apps like TikTok, where users have pored back over candid photos of the young men together. I don't know how we will carry on without him. However, gay men played another role in Kennedys history that was not overtly sexual: they were part of an avant-garde cultural world that Jackie Kennedy cultivated, as she linked the Kennedy name to national arts, letters and music for the first time. The pair matriculated at Princeton together in the fall of 1935, although Jack had to withdraw for health reasons, probably early signs of the Addisons disease that would plague him the rest of his life. Jacqueline Bouvier would have the same problem, using every possible excuse to avoid the game, after she and Jack were married in 1953." For Billings' funeral, some of the younger Kennedys served as pallbearers (as Billings himself had done for some of their own, like the slain Sen. Robert F. Kennedy). When Jack reached home, the two friends greeted each other like there was no tomorrow." ', Roommates: JFK and Billings (right) roomed atChoate and again atPrinceton (pictured mid-1930s outside a drugstore with roommate Ralph Horton Jr), JFK's sisterEunice Kennedy Shriver said his relationship with Billingswas a 'complete liberation of the spirit' for Jack (Pictured on their Christmas card with fellow Princeton roommateRalph Horton Jr), While her husband had his qualms about Billings and couldn't stand to have him around, the matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, had a different take. But there is also an important story about race, and social class, to be told here. (Page 24), Lem and Bobby, Waterville Valley, N.H., circa 1967"'When Bobby joined the political fray, no one was happier than Lem. "[48] Billings spent the last weekend of October 1963 with the couple, the last time he saw them together. The Kennedys were a liberal family and one that tolerated a lot of heterosexual promiscuity as well. Still, Billings was viewed by many I interviewed for my biography of RFK Jr. as his gay Svengali who guided and literally tried to control every aspect of Bobby Jr.'s life from the time he was in his mid-teens. Didnt Lem confess to a friend that he loved JFK? [19], In 1961, Billings declined Kennedy's offer to appoint him the first head of the Peace Corps, director of a new agency to promote tourism, the U.S. Travel Service, or ambassador to Denmark. ", Billings' family could chafe at his adoration: "My uncle was not someone you could have a reasonable conversation with about what was going on with the Kennedys," his nephew said in Princeton's alumni magazine. Lem Billings may have been present for, but just outside the frame, of these pictures. Soon I discovered that he glared with equal suspicion at anyone whose friendship with JFK postdated his own. The one iconic photo of President John F. Kennedy up close and personal with a woman other than Jackie shows him and his attorney general brother, Robert, coming on to curvaceous Marilyn Monroe at a party. "And everything ready for a big, big party.". Featuring interviews with Ben Bradlee, Gore Vidal, Ted Sorenson, friends, family, and many others, award -- winning journalist David Pitts begins the story with the early friendship between the men. JFK, or 'Jack' as he was known by his close friends and family, had a gay best friend named Lem Billings, who he met in prep school when Kennedy was 15 and Lem . "[Billings] was a witness to so much of what was going on. According to Quirk, Billings revealed that his friendship with the future president of the United States 'included oral sex, with Jack always on the receiving end. Billings as a teenager was 6' 2", weighed 175 pounds, and was the strongest member of the Choate crew. myocardial infarction. While JFK is legendarily known as a master womanizer who frequently cheated on his first lady, his curious three-decades long intimate friendship with Billings suggests more than a simple bromance. [44] "Jack made a big difference in my life," Billings said. Lem's team was attempting to take down a number of South Vietnamese officials. He remained in the closet until his death in 1981 at the age of 65, according to Pitts. Co-executive Editor, Public Seminar and Professor of History, The New School for Social Research, Photo credit: Cecil Stoughton/Wikimedia Commons. But was reportedly upset that her husband spent so much time with him, and that he often stayed overnight at the White House. You can follow her on Twitter .