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The Kennedys were a liberal family and one that tolerated a lot of heterosexual promiscuity as well., In her memoir, Times To Remember, published eleven years after JFKs assassination in Dallas in 1963, matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy 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., Lem Billings and John F. Kennedy pictured at the Kennedy familys Palm Beach estate. Biographer Sally Bedell Smith referred to Billings as probably the saddest of the Kennedy widows., RELATED:Details About Kristen Stewarts Fiance Dylan Meyers & Their Adorably Casual Proposal. 'I thought, that's the kind of s**t heavy drug users pull. See additional information. Once again, Ethel Kennedy made just one appearance at the school, accompanied by Lem Billings, when Bobby was admitted, and 'everything had to go through Billings,' said Warren Geissinger, Bobby's Pomfret advisor, looking back years later. 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. 'I got the impression he felt an obligation that somebody had to care for Bobby because Mrs. Kennedy was not a hands-on mother at all. 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. October 14, 2015. Nature rushes forth, and the car dealers and the Hot Shoppes fall away before dogwoods and tulip trees, tatters of forsythia. While the 35th president has been legendarily known as a womanizer who frequently cheated on his wife, Oppenheimer alleges that JFK's three-decades-long relationship with his former prep school. In his second year at Millbrook, Bobby began boasting that he was doing certain drugs intravenously - shooting up, like any street junkie. I'm sure there were moments where they drew aside together and talked about this problem called Jack Kennedy because he was a problem for a young woman that was looking for love and attachment.". Did the 35th US President John F Kenned have a secret gay relationship with his childhood friend Lem Billings? He had an older sister, Ruth (Speer) Steele, older brother, Eugene "Bud" Speer, and younger half-brother Lawrence "Larry" Payant. I let him down.'. , In office January 20, 1961 November 22, 1963. 'And there he was hunting rats out of that pile of dead sheep and cow carcasses. He served with the Navy in the Pacific during World War II, then attended the Harvard Graduate School of Business. I have no evidence one way or another, but I would discount [any sexual activity. From the book Jackie & Me by Louis Bayard. Among the snapshots is one that shows a handsome pre-presidential Kennedy sunning himself, sprawled on a chaise at Patriarch Joe Kennedy's Palm Beach estate. Our website services, content and products are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Born 15 Apr 1916 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, United States. The content produced by YourTango is for informational and educational purposes only. 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. "And he also played a very important role in the courtship between Jackie Bouvier and Jack Kennedy. 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. How chilly it is for March. 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. Jerry Oppenheimer is a New York Times bestselling author who has written two books about the Kennedys. 'But Bobby was doing a little more than some of the rest of us - a little more and maybe harder stuff than the rest of us.'. 'People think I'm a joke,' he once acknowledged. Beyond the senator, young Bobby's aunt Jackie had inquired about his welfare but never visited.'. President Jimmy Carter broke royal protocol by kissing the Queen Mother on the lips during his visit in 1977. 'But Lem,' he clearly recalled, 'was around a lot, and we as faculty were told who he was and that he was Bobby's caretaker, as it were, in a loco parentis kind of role. Of course, that gave most ofus the thought - does this guy have a job other than caring for Bobby? The family went back ", Bayard learned something else about Jackie during his research. He attended one of the parents' weekends, but was never seen on campus again. Lem was the second person Jack's sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, called after reaching her sister, Pat Lawford. After Jack Kennedy's election to the presidency, Billings was a constant presence and overnight guest at the White House. Billings and. Given that Billings was a heavy-drinking Wanting to be around family . When we first happen upon her, her face is angled away, as though she's cocking her ear for a nightingale. Her general lilt, as best I can tell, is interrogative, but why should that be a surprise? . While on the road, the only person he touched base with was Lem Billings. Quirk had met Billings in the mid-Forties when both were volunteers in Jack Kennedy's first congressional campaign. Quirk immediately pegged Billings as gay, noting his "high, screechy laugh," and "high nasal whine of a voice.". "You learn a lot about how he met Jackie, about how intrigued he was by her, how intrigued he was by them," says Bayard of listening to Billing's testimony stored in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. This is one of the questions Louis Bayard raises in his upcoming novel Jackie & Me, which will be published by Algonquin Books in June 2022. A telephone conversation between President Kennedy and Lem Billings. When Bobby Kennedy, Infuriated, his mother demanded: 'Just leave home. But as I began to research him, I realized he was also very good friends with Jackie," the novelist says. Billings reportedly wrote the future president a love note on a piece of toilet paper (pictured at the Kennedys' Palm Beach estate), JFK was famous for his womanizing habits, but one of his closest relationships was withLem Billings. ', White House visitor: Billings often spent the night at the White House, which upset Jackie Kennedy. Lem also worked for JFK in the West Virginia and Wisconsin primaries But was reportedly upset that her husband spent so much time with him, and that he often stayed overnight at the White House. Bayard's novel takes place primarily in the months leading up to Jack and Jackie's wedding on Sept. 12, 1953. I know he had all that baggage with his father, but being in that pit that was the kind of thing he would do. the most part, commented to a White House usher, "He (Lem) has been a house I mean, she doesn't look like she belongs there any more than I do, and I briefly wonder if she's a housemaid or a nanny, taking her one allotted evening out. John F. Kennedy with Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. For the first time, I begin to wonder if Miss Bouvier is nervousthough it's difficult to confirm because she has a small voice and the wind seems to slap every word back down her gullet. Like the rest of the free world, Billings was devastated when President Kennedy was assassinated. He was by all accounts JFK's best. Funeral homes; Help and advice. From all accounts, they became fast friends, drawn to each other by their LeMoyne Billings and Ethel Kennedy attend Liza Minnelli Concert on May 23, 1970 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. You didn't want to get too close to him.'. In truth, the Kennedys did have criticisms of Queen Elizabeth following their meeting. times, Lem might have been described as a "confirmed bachelor," although Kirk LeMoyne Billings, a retired advertising executive and a friend of President John F. Kennedy, died Wednesday at his Manhattan apartment. Girls in these days are instructed to shoot out a clean, firm thread of inquiry at all times. David Pitts, the author of Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship, told him: Lem was a gay man and he had a 14-year-old, good-looking kid living in his house with him and there had been rumors because of that. He had his own room in the White House and advised Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in her redecoration of the White House. Bobby, who would become one of the nation's leading - and often controversial - environmental activists and lawyers, was a member of the falconry group at Millbrook, but his behavior was considered bizarre. Biographer Sally Bedell Smith referred to Billings as probably the saddest of the Kennedy widows., Following the assassination of RFK in 1968, Billings transferred his romantic feeling to Kennedys nephew, Bobby Kennedy Jr, to whom Billings would become a fawning surrogate father and fellow drug user.. "I think she went into this thinking that she was getting the conventional husband, even though her own father was a complete philanderer and she knew that," Bayard says. In what was later viewed as a twisted relationship, Billings was pumping up Bobby for a high political future at the same time he was sharing drugs with him, from marijuana to heroin through their years together. The martyred widow had taken out her anger and frustration on an easy and available target - her third-born, her late husband's namesake, Bobby Jr., who was a behavior problem even before his father's tragic death. On June 30, 1937 John F. "Jack" Kennedy embarked on a two-and-a-half-month tour of Europe with his friend Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings aboard the S.S. Washington. Kirk LeMoyne Billings was Jack's very best friend from their time at Choate prep school in 1933 to that fateful day in Dallas 1963. Advocate Contributors November 22 2013 4:00 AM EST In photos. ", "I thought, 'What a great cat-bird seat he would've had, and wouldn't he make a great narrator?' Try again later. 'Rob' Bierregaard Jr., who later went on to teach ornithology at the University of North Carolina, recalled, 'Next to the school there was a cow pit where the local dairy farmers threw their dead cows, and it was full of rats. According to Billings' biographer David Pitts, Once JFK decided that Billings was his best friend like it or leave, everybody in the family sort of fell in line with that. They met in 1933 in their sophomore year at Choate Rosemary Hall, the exclusive Connecticut prep school, when both were teenagers, working together on their class's yearbook, and Billings instantly became attracted sexually and otherwise to the handsome scion of America's self-styled royal family. But Kennedy's reaction to Billings gay come-on soon changed and he became more amenable to his friend's advances, according to the writer Lawrence J. Quirk, author of "The Kennedys in Hollywood." John F. Kennedy and Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billingsmet in 1933 as sophomoresat Choate Rosemary Hall, a Connecticut prep school where they worked on their class yearbook together. A wider smile than I would have guessed possible. During the night of May 28, 1981-almost two decades after JFK's untimely death - 65-year-old Lem Billings died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack. JFK appeared to be in love with the idea of Billings being in love with him. ", "We'd have to drive clear to New York for that. Quirk alleged thatBilling and Kennedys relationship included oral sex with JFK always being on the receiving end. For Billings, a year older than the future president, it was love at first sight and from the instant they met Billings was sexually attracted to the handsome scion of America's so-called royal family. Fanning, a self- described wild child at the time, recalled Bobby's visits to the pit, which he had witnessed, as 'grotesque. Bobby, do you have clothes?" 'We had a couple of calls from Jackie - "How's my nephew doing?" descendant of John LeMoyne, a French physician and Dr. Francis LeMoyne, an abolitionist 2023 Meadowrockalpacas. The funeral will be held in Pittsburgh. Lem had extremely poor eye sight and a high-pitched voice. For all I know, she's speculating about the Washington Senators' pennant chances. In May 1981, as Bobby was about to marry his first wife, Emily Black, 65-year-old Lem Billings suddenly died of a heat attack in his sleep, Shortly before he went to bed he got drunk, started to cry and told a friend, 'I made a terrible mistake. Adapted from New York Times bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer's explosive new book, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: RFK Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream. He may have been the 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. Obituaries act as quiet reminders to help us to remember them and all we enjoyed with them while they were with us, a celebration of their life. RELATED VIDEO: Carly Simon Opens Up on Unlikely Friendship with Jackie Kennedy and Jackie's Thoughts on JFK, Aristotle Onassis & More, By now, of course, I'm extricating myself from the front of the car and inserting myself with no great grace into the back, and the operation is so consuming that, for a second or two, I lose all consciousness of her, and then I hear her sayin that voice, like a ghost whispering through the pipes"You must be Lem.". It was he, not Ethel, who handled all of Bobby's expenses 'He would come over fairly frequently for dinner whenever he was in town,' she recalled. 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