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Allegheny Cemetery. I don't know how we will carry on without him. Lem Billings (left) with John F Kennedy (right) Kennedy and Billings had a sexual relationship including 'oral sex, with Jack always on the receiving end.' Kennedys in Hollywood by Lawrence J. Quirk / The Dark Side Of The Dream [37], Billings' role as "first friend" was assessed by many observers at the time and since. 'Yesterday was Jack's birthday. Billings, Lem (Kirk LeMoyne), 1916-1981. Even worse, many such slurs aren't from men but 'I couldn't do it without you': Victoria Beckham poses with her whole family after her PFW show - as she Brooklyn Beckham puts on a loved-up display with wife Nicola Peltz as they head back to hotel after Cruz Beckham supports his mother Victoria as he carrying his very own VB handbag on the way to her show Like father, like daughter! But even more than that, the author said that Billings was intimate friends with the Kennedys despite societal norms of the time ingratiating himself with a most powerful family. When a butler commented on the fact that Billings was leaving his belongings in one of the third-floor guest rooms, the First Lady replied: "He's been my house guest since I was married. At least one of these intimates, Kirk LeMoyne Lem Billings, was one of Jacks cherished body men, and he lived part-time in the White House throughout the three years of Kennedys presidency. Were Lem and Jack sexually intimate as well? "[Billings] was a witness to so much of what was going on. Sometimes Jack bitched Lem out one letter saying, "Of all the cheap shit I have. It remains the worst such failure in the history of advertising agencies. Jack's best friend was Lem, and he would want to remind everyone of that today. Later Years. Harvard University. To begin with, why would JFK give him a private room at the white house, to come and go at his leisure? President John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas 50 years ago, leaving behind a mourning nation and his gay best friend, Lem Billings. Vidal thought Jacqueline Kennedy thought Billings "was kind of a nothing but Jack needed him and she was practical. Variability in proportionate mortality in 363 Latin American cities by country. With so many people looking for a relationship with him as he rose through the political ranks, there was one man who stood out as one of JFK's near-constant companions. "[29] Historian Sally Bedell Smith compared him to Leonard Zelig, a nondescript character in Woody Allen's 1983 film who is always present in the back row at major events. For Jack and Lem, the carefree period of their lives -- their school and college years -- were now behind them. The story of Jack and Lem opens a window into the presidency, but it also suggests that historians of heterosexuality might want to look more closely to see which gay lives are lived near, but outside the conventional frame, of heterosexual families, a project that novelist Amy Bloom has recently undertaken in her fictional account of the love affair between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickock. His father was a prominent physician and a graduate of the U.S. It would go on to become one of his most prized possessions." Collier and Horowitz described Billings, later in life, as invariably enmeshed in his late friend's larger family. ", 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. Not just any member, either, he was an assassin and the leader of a Viet Cong death squad who had been targeting and killing South Vietnamese National Police officers and their families. Pitts' 2007 book helped spur renewed interest in the friendship between President Kennedy and Billings. As Billings told researchers for an oral history interview for the John F. Kennedy Library, the two met as teenagers at Choate Preparatory School for boys in Wallingford, Connecticut, in 1933, while working on the student yearbook. A Princeton friend and former business partner confided to Pitts about Billings that after Jacks death: He didnt want to live anymore, and other friends claimed that he never recovered from the loss. He didn't want to share his friendship with Jack. Lem Billings Is JFK's 'Go-Between' During Courtship with Jackie as Imagined in New Novel, Robert McNamara's Son Craig Remembers Playing with JFK Jr. and Caroline Kennedy After JFK's Death, New Book Delves Into JFK's Charisma, Insatiable Affairs and His Last Moments with Baby Son Patrick, Author William Manchester Unmasks the Man Behind the Corncob Pipe: Macarthur, A Look Back at the Long List of Kennedy Family Tragedies, 'Without Any Warning, Mrs. Kennedy Begins Crying': Witness Remembers Jackie After the JFK Assassination, Jackie Kennedy's Sister Lee Radziwill Told Friend Truman Capote of Bitter Jealousy She Publicly Denied, Meet JFK's Alleged Mistresses and How Some Met Mysterious Ends, What to Know About Diana de Vegh, Who Says She Had an Affair with JFK When She Was 20, Jackie Kennedy Knew JFK Relationship Would Involve 'Heartbreak' & More Details from New Book, Marilyn Monroe 'Was Enamored of' JFK but 'Wasn't About to Break Up' His Marriage, Frank Sinatra's Friend Says, Why Ethel Kennedy Would Have Forgiven Robert F. Kennedy Anything Including Possible Affairs, oral history interview for the John F. Kennedy Library. Gore Vidal, the writer who claimed he viewed homosexuality as normal as heterosexuality, disparaged the JFK-Billings relationship during the Kennedy administration. The murder of Curtis Lemansky marked the beginning of the end for the Strike Team. As Billings' biographer David Pitts told me, 'Once JFK decided that Billings was his best friend like it or leave, everybody in the family sort of fell in line with that. When their brother Bobby married Ethel Skakel in a royal-like wedding in Greenwich, Connecticut, the staunchly conservative republican and seemingly homophobic Skakels let their feelings about Billings' gayness be known. cause of death. The first lady, Jackie, had something of a love-hate relationship with Billings. 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. In 1958, when Kennedy decided to launch a campaign for the presidency from his Massachusetts Senate seat, the United States had not yet experienced a sexual revolution that would challenge and change many people. Lem Chesmore is a 34-year-old Billings native who grew up on the sport. [21][22] The next year, Kennedy named him to a board to plan America's participation in the New York World's Fair of 19645. 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. [13] He later had several jobs, including selling Coca-Cola dispensers to drugstores and working at a General Shoe store. 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. 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. He believed Billings loved Kennedy. President John F. Kennedy has become infamous for his vivid, and some might say almost compulsive, heterosexual affairs. It was Bobby Kennedy Jr. who gave the eulogy. educated at. The two grew so close over the following months that Billings was invited to the Kennedy family home in Palm Beach, Florida, for the holiday season and, months later, to their Hyannis Port compound, where he was badly burned in a defective shower and hospitalized for three weeks. The . They remained close until Kennedy's assassinationBillings had his own room in the White House, and Joe Kennedy Sr. called him "a second son." (Which is odd considering JFK . [66], In 1987, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin described how Billings structured her interviews with him. This may have been true of his wife, although perhaps she understood from the beginning that their marriage would be non-monogamous. His name was Lem Billings. But this may, in fact, just be gossip. ", Matriarch Rose Kennedy wrote in her biography that Billings was "one of 'Jack's surprises,' " and soon found a place for himself: "He has really been part of 'our family' since that first time he showed up at our house. In recent years, there has also been talk of a movie adaptation. Though Billings who was working as a New York City advertising executive at the time of the assassination continued on at his firm for another decade, his life was never the same. 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. An autopsy report says Billings' cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. 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. (Page 307)Listen to a short phone conversation between the two of them: DAVID PITTS is a longtime journalist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post and other leading newspapers. Because of him, I was never lonely, Billings said once. He sent one letter to Lem's mother addressed to the American Field Service PO Box in New York. 0 references. Murdaugh is heckled as he leaves court, Ken Bruce finishes his 30-year tenure as host of BBC Radio 2, Missing hiker buried under snow forces arm out to wave to helicopter, Hershey's Canada releases HER for SHE bars featuring a trans activist, Insane moment river of rocks falls onto Malibu Canyon in CA, Fleet-footed cop chases an offender riding a scooter, Family of a 10-month-old baby filmed vaping open up. 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. Knowing that, like many men who lived double lives, he could have had a wife and family, Billings regarded his friendship with Jack as a gift. Wikipedia (3 entries) edit. 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. ', 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. Health Insurance data come from Health Insurance Coverage: Early Release of Estimates From the National Health Interview Survey, 2014 pdf icon; 2014 birth data come from National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. "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. But there is also an important story about race, and social class, to be told here. This is fascinating, Claire. In many ways, Lem was like a father to me and he was the best friend I will ever have.' Williams, a handsome gay southerner, had already written seven hit plays. The 51-year-old daughter of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died Sept. 16 while working out at her Washington, D.C., gym. (Page 24), Lem and Bobby, Waterville Valley, N.H., circa 1967"'When Bobby joined the political fray, no one was happier than Lem. "[27] Arthur Schlesinger thought Billings "used to glare at me when we occasionally encountered each other in the company of JFK, and for a time I took this rather personally. Sitelinks. 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. Eunice Kennedy Shriver said, '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, and everything ready for a big, big party. He claimed he was rebuffed: according to Pitts, it was Jacks decency at that moment that caused the pair to become close, and the moment they decided to become roommates. Jack & Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship, John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings by David Pitts Carroll & Graf. 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. [30], The press frequently reported on his presence at Kennedy family events, such as the arrival of the Kennedy children in Washington in February 1961. He became Jackies confidant and the trusted recipient of her views about the other women who flitted in and out of her husbands life. [16], On September 12, 1953, Billings was an usher at the wedding of Kennedy and Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. Billings would later spend nights in the White House where he had his own room, Schoolboy crush? Bobby's decision to pick up Jack's torch was important to Lem as well. 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." During the night of May 28, 1981almost two decades after JFK's untimely death - 65-year-old Lem Billings died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack. 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. [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 had once told Bobby that. Born in 1916, Billings was the son of a Pittsburgh doctor. And all the while, Lem Billings was there: waiting, serving, comforting and helping the Kennedy family adjust to the public glare. Get that ass! he said to Vidal. "Jack made a big difference in my life," Billings said in his oral history for the Kennedy library, adding, "He may have been the reason I never got married.". [59], He escorted Jean Kennedy Smith, sister of the President, to a gala ballet performance in 1966[61] and Ethel Kennedy, the president's sister-in-law, to the 1971 opening of the Kennedy Center. But above all, Bobby was very important to Lem personally. [18], In 1960, on leave from his job, he worked on Kennedy's presidential campaign. ', Jacqueline Kennedy was reportedly unhappuabout her husband and Billings' three decade long relationship. Yesterday was Jack's birthday. Once, Alford remembered, Kennedy suggested that she would be doing him a favor if she agreed to help his younger brother, Ted, a newly elected Senator, with his own tensions, while the President watched from across the pool. Mom who lost both sons to fentanyl blasts laughing Biden, Two Russian tanks annihilated with bombs by Ukrainian armed forces, Isabel Oakeshott receives 'menacing' message from Matt Hancock, Pavement where disabled woman gestured at cyclist before fatal crash, Pro-Ukrainian drone lands on Russian spy planes exposing location, 'Buster is next!' [14] In 1958, he moved to the Manhattan advertising firm Lennen & Newell[15] as an advertising executive. I'm not that kind of boy.'. "Jack was anxious to reach Lem and to find out how he was doing. "[21] In September 1961, he accepted an appointment to the board of trustees of the planned National Cultural Center, which later became the Kennedy Center. He helped handle even some of Jack's most personal affairs, Pitts writes in his book: "Jack's dates would be managed by Lem. 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. In its final year, Lennen & Newell had domestic billings of $140 million, and Mr. Toigo had said that the agency was worth between $12 million and $15 million and that he owned about 95 percent of the stock. Use Restriction Status: None. And the White House itself seems to have been welcoming to other non-heteronormative men in the Kennedy years. 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. I've had enough of life': Grandmother, 86, is reduced to tears after killjoy Tory RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: As Florida governor and Donald Trump rival Ron DeSantis steps up his bid to win the Hairy Bikers star Dave Myers speaks out on his deep depression after chemotherapy which left him having 'How I snatched JK Rowling's baby out of her abusive husband's arms - and helped her flee with the Harry Top equestrian rider, 39, once known as the 'golden girl' of horse eventing, is facing jail after being A possum feared extinct is discovered by an amateur naturalist in Papua New Guinea being cooked on a Now California reparations panel RAISES amount it wants to give 1.8m black people from $220,000 to $360,000 My weekly horoscope: What will March 4th 2023 bring for MY star sign? I have one additional comment, probably to be regarded as politically incorrect. "In many ways, Lem thought of his life as being over after Jack died," the younger Bobby Kennedy told Pitts for his book. William Lemp III died an untimely death of a heart attack at the age of 42. [34] He joined the President's entourage for his tours of Europe in both 1961 and 1963. Jack Kennedy and Lem Billings met at Choate and remained friends until the Dallas gunfire that ended Kennedy's life thirty years later. Billings was a longtime Kennedy family friend, working to preserve the slain president's legacy even after death. [48] Billings saw the President for the last time when they dined at the White House with Greta Garbo on November 13, 1963, nine days before the President's assassination in Dallas. ", Still, he was well aware of his proximity to history. Princeton University. Have you heard from him?' Vidal, the author of a best-selling gay World War II novel, published in 1947 at a time when most queer books were ruled obscene and evidence of homosexual acts could bring a prison term, was unabashedly public about his affairs with men. Billings was a prep school roommate of Kennedy, an usher at his wedding and a campaigner for his successful 1960 presidential bid. Lem Billings also buffered JFK from the toll that infidelity took on the Kennedy marriage. Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings was an American businessman known for his close and long-time friendship with John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family. The Depression had hurt the Billings family financially, and Lem Billings was at Choate on scholarship. 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 . (Page 53), Jack, Lem, and Dunker, the dog they bought on their European tour in 1937"Jack and Lem failed to make any friends in Germany, unlike in the other countries they visited, except one -- Dunker, a lovable Dachshund that they ran into on their way to Nuremberg. Their very intimate relationship would last from those school days to Billings even having a room in the Kennedy White House distressing for the first lady to the day of Kennedy's assassination. He managed the campaign in the Third Congressional District in the Wisconsin primary and then served as general troubleshooter and coordinator of television in the West Virginia primary. While web sleuths and conspiracy theorists were looking for the person who killed her . Author Louis Bayard focuses much of his upcoming novel Jackie & Me on the relationship between Billings and Kennedy, too. "Because of him," Lem Billings once said of President Kennedy, "I was never lonely" "[53] Though newspapers often mentioned Billings' attendance at major social events, they identified him either as the escort of a member of the Kennedy family or included him in a list of Kennedy friends. Lem Billings passed away from a heart attack at 65 in 1981. Release of Secret JFK Assassination Records Delayed by Biden, Angering Some of the Kennedys. 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). I suppose if you dont do the missionary sex position thing you can call yourself straight and for any other position, it is just experimental straight sex? As the then-Senator stepped up for his turn, Williams admired his body. "[44], Many testify to Billings' wit and ability to help the President relax. Lem Billings (right) was Kennedy's roommate at Choate and Princeton and an usher at his wedding, Spending most weekends at the White House during JFK's presidency, he became known as the "first friend." Although Billings kept his homosexuality private, it wasn't entirely a secret. 'Haven't heard a word from you,' Jack wrote. Billings then prepared responses and read them aloud to her. In 1964, Billings was named to head a ten-person committee to select a memorial to Kennedy to be placed in the Kennedy Center. In addition, gay and lesbian people often have reasons for not coming out, or not seeking the liberation of living in queer communities, lives that are worth exploring for what we might learn about queer milieus that do not fit a conventional liberationist narrative.

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