" Bayard says of Billings. 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. From 1946 to 1948, Lem attended Harvard Business School. Quirk immediately pegged Billings as gay, noting his 'high, screechy laugh,' and 'high nasal whine of a voice.' The result is a meditation on the definitions . Writer Gore Vidal once called Billings the chief f****t at Camelot and said Kennedy felt quite comfortable in the company of homosexuals as long as they were smart enough to hold his interest.. Supposedly. After Jack Kennedy's election to the presidency, Billings was a constant presence and overnight guest at the White House. All the Kennedys were very much aware of Billings's sexual preference, or suspected it, accepted it, and welcomed him into their exclusive inner circle - practically adopted him - although the patriarch Joe Kennedy found him annoying at times. Jack and Lem explores the enduring friendship between John F. Kennedy and Kirk Lemoyne Billings (aka "Lem"). His goal was acceptance at Harvard, which was virtually guaranteed, so many Kennedys before had gone there. ', In fact, in private, she ranted, 'You've dragged your family's name through the mud.'. Among the faculty there may have been a collective sigh of reliefbecause things with Bobby would have only escalated and the attitude was, okay, he's now the next school's problem.'. Billings, who was a year older than Jack Kennedy, made his desire known while the two were still at Choate in a bizarre love note, penned on a piece of toilet paper that could be disposed of easily to avoid incrimination at a time when homosexuality was illicit. 'But the one thing that struck me even at that tender age was that I felt Lem was just obsessed with Bobby the way he watched over him, the way he was hugely protective of him. Son of Frederick Tremaine Billings and Romaine Elizabeth (LeMoyne) Billings. Lem even wrote John a love note on toilet paper . Ethel Kennedy issued the requisite concerned parent statement, calling Bobby a 'fine boy, and we have always been proud of him. Then, when Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, his wife Ethel Skakel had Billings act as the surrogate father to her son Bobby Jr. According to one of the school's leading administrators and teachers, Hagop Merjian, Bobby was doing, as he put it, 'Really bad, s**t drugs heavy s**t'. The biographer Sally Bedell Smith, referred to Billings in one of her books as 'probably the saddest of the Kennedy widows.'. Murdaugh is heckled as he leaves court, Ken Bruce finishes his 30-year tenure as host of BBC Radio 2, Moment teenager crashes into back of lorry after 100mph police race, Alex Murdaugh unanimously found GUILTY of murder of wife and son, Isabel Oakeshott clashes with Nick Robinson over Hancock texts, Family of a 10-month-old baby filmed vaping open up, Ukrainian soldier takes out five tanks with Javelin missiles. Leave your condolences to the family on this memorial page or send flowers to show you care. As they became close, Billings confided that his relationship with Kennedy was, in fact, sexual, to a point. They shared an insatiable intellectual curiosity, a robust sense of humor, and a disdain for petty rules. A group home in Fort Myer, maybe. Ambassador to France under JFK, were hauled into juvenile court in the town of Barnstable on Cape Cod on charges of marijuana possession. Then she leans toward Jack and, in a whisper stagy enough for me to hear, says, "I like your friend.". It's when we're crossing back over Chain Bridge that she rouses herself to ask: "Jack, what color is your car?". Warm up with a cup off our favourite cocoas, Driving From Dubai To Oman: What You Need To Know - Just Go Exploring, The Witcher 3 red mutagen location and how to farm at low level, Farm Heroes Saga: Top 10 Tips & Cheats You Need to Know, 5 Goat Fencing Options And Details To Consider Insteading, All Roblox Adopt Me Pet & Item Trade Values, Malay - Amboseli National Parks - Manyeleti Game Reserve, Scenic Dinner Train Rides By State (2022): A Complete Guide, Tren 8 interpretacja, pct for ostarine only cycle, WotLK Classic Best Professions For Each Class & Specs, Who was in the car when John F Kennedy was shot? 11:10 EDT 13 Oct 2015 And so the book is full of alternative outcomes, the different roads that these three characters might have taken, particularly Jackie and particularly Lem.". Lem Billings was called and, according to Donn Wright, who became the new headmaster, 'he didn't try to change anybody's minds. When Joey Brode heard the story years later, she said that what Bobby had done, if true, was 'disgusting. He had his own room in the White House and advised Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in her redecoration of the White House. A unique and lasting tribute for a . He had an older sister, Ruth (Speer) Steele, older brother, Eugene "Bud" Speer, and younger half-brother Lawrence "Larry" Payant. 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. They both kept diaries documenting, in words and pictures, their adventures, mishaps, and observations along the way. ', Rose Kennedy, however, had a different, more positive view of Billings. Bobby finally earned his high school diploma in June 1972 at the experimental and alternative Palfrey Street School, in the Boston suburb of Watertown, where he arrived wearing dirty, faded jeans, smelling like patchouli oil. Quirk had met Billings in the mid-Forties when both were volunteers in Jack Kennedy's first congressional campaign. 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. quoted from the book: "Jack made a big difference in my life," 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. "Jack and Lem: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship" Kennedy knew Billings was in love with him (Billings declared his love and was rejected by Kennedy) and Kennedy liked that, the attention and knowing the power he has over billings also his wife Jackie Kennedy hated Billings and hated that he and . he's stoned." 'Ethel never had any contact about her son. 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. It was all quite bizarre. Sam Gillette is a books Writer/Reporter for People.com and People Magazine. the bond between Billings and Kennedy became so strong that Billings stayed back ', Hejduk also immediately perceived that the relationship between Bobby and Billings 'was probably one of those unrequited-love kind of things.'. Did the 35th US President John F Kenned have a secret gay relationship with his childhood friend Lem Billings? But I think he was using heroinstudents were saying, "Mr. Merjian, he passes out at night. Mr. Billings was active in all of John Kennedy's campaigns as well as those of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He was born in Pittsburgh and graduated from Princeton. In school JFK and Lem were close. And I think Billings had a way of editing things - painting the picture of Bobby's performance smoother than it really was. guest every weekend of my married life." And it's a kind of interesting love triangle between these three fascinating people.". 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 . Goat's eyes, that's my first churlish thought, or a madwoman's, but maybe that's to forestall the sense that I'm being seen through a wider lens. RELATED:Jeffrey Epstein's Relationship With Princess Diana Explored In New Book. Two months after Bobby was expelled, he along with a cousin, Bobby Sargent Shriver III, son of the former U.S. . Nothing for it, then, but to watch Miss Bouvier's headunder the weight of her impending introduction to the Kennedy clanloll ever so gradually to the right. Something quickens in the column of her neck. Queer question. I don't know whether she wrote to Bobby, but she certainly didn't telephone or visit him. Lem Billings. ', 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. The Letter JFK Wrote His Secret Lover Before He Died, 5. 'Everybody was at least smoking pot - everybody - and a lot of people were doing LSD and other recreational stuff,' recalled classmate John Seibel, who became an attorney. 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. "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. Bayard says it was a "gas" creating fictional narratives for these historical figures. 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. of 1 Jack Kennedy and Lem Billings met at Choate and remained friends until the Dallas gunfire that ended Kennedy's life thirty years later. Doesn't she hear the car's tires on the gravel? Jack's best friend was Lem, and he would want to remind everyone of that today. But then I realize she's never seen Jack's car (or Jack himself, maybe) in the naked light of day. As George Terrien, Ethel's brother-in-law declared, 'Everyone knew Lem was queer - the Kennedys, the Skakels, everyone.'. 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. 11 Strict Rules That Elon Musk Makes His Girlfriends & Wives Follow, Justin Bieber Suspected As The Father Of Kourtney Kardashian's Son Reign (Instead Of Scott Disick), Why Kate Moss Was 'Scared' & 'Couldn't Get Out Of Bed For Weeks' After Working With Mark Wahlberg. He noted that everywhere Jack went, Billings was sure to follow, like a puppy dog. I am sure the good Lord knows that heaven is Jesus and Lem and Jack and Bobby loving one another.'. Irelands most popular baby names of 2022 - by county! Billings kept the letters JFK wrote to him between 1934 and 1939, and he donated the entire collection to the Library in the 1970s. '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. See additional information. When he was in his late 20s, he'd be arrested for heroin possession, after overdoing on an airplane flight, on his way to get help for his addiction. The president was famously believed to have affairs during their marriage. "Will we be chauffeuring her fianc, too? She has dabbed herself with Chateau Krigler 12 (I consider telling her it's my mother's favorite), and there is the complicating counter-aroma of Pall Malls, and somewhere at the back, simple bovine perspiration. Wright said he never heard from Bobby's mother after the decision was made to boot her son. 'We couched it in terms of what was best for Bobby. JAMIE RICHARDSON: John F. Kennedy had no shortage of people who considered themselves friends of the 35th president. Billings made his desire known while the two were still at school by writing Kennedy a love note on a piece of toilet paper. Billings, who was a year older than Jack Kennedy, made his desire known while the two were still at Choate in a bizarre love note, penned on a piece of toilet paper that could be disposed of easily to avoid incrimination at a time when homosexuality was illicit. At fourteen and fifteen, Bobby was proving his bad-boy bona fides with Jesse Pinkman zeal. 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. 2023byTango Publishing Corporation All Rights Reserved. (In September, Jack joined And now that we've crossed into Virginia, the only thing left to figure out is where she might live. In 1962, the Queen, then 35, invited Jackie to a lunch when the First Lady was in London visiting her sister, Lee Radziwill, who lived there with her husband Prince Stanislaw Radziwill. Lem Billings Is JFK's 'Go-Between' During Courtship with Jackie as Imagined in New Novel PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at Louis Bayard's upcoming Jackie & Me By Sam Gillette Published on. But the man married to Jackie Kennedy was quietly chided for his compulsive philandering. Knowing the kind of intimate relationship that he had with the president, advisers were concerned about political repercussions, and even blackmail. 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. , updated Love Irish history? Terrien had been RFK's roommate at Harvard and later at the University of Virginia Law School, and he was particularly upset about what he saw clearly as Billings's growing infatuation with young Bobby. Lem also worked for JFK in the West Virginia and Wisconsin primaries Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings, was a prep school roommate and then lifelong close friend of President John F. Kennedy. 'I can't say that I saw him put a needle in his arm,' he stated, 'but he talked like he was and he bragged about it. By easy degrees, she turns around and bestows on me a fuller version of that first smile. This was at the end of their final presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York in October, 2008. She reportedly had a love-hate relationship with her husband's best friend. Billings and Kennedy took Jack Johns. "And we could have made a very different choice. Miss Bouvier is a destination. He'd be expelled from Millbrook and later be ordered to leave the second school, Pomfret, in rural Connecticut, for using drugs and displaying bad, often bizarre behavior. 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.. ", But Billings was embarrassed about his effeminate mannerisms - he'd remain publicly closeted for his lifetime. Beyond love, Jackie & Me is also about how decisions can define us. 'I thought, that's the kind of s**t heavy drug users pull. I have no evidence one way or another, but I would discount [any sexual activity. Billings and. 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. the two men was friendship. Somebody who was also not of the Kennedys, but very much wanted to be one of them. 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. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom was unable to personally travel to Kennedy's funeral because of her pregnancy with Prince Edward but later described "the unprecedented intensity of that wave of grief, mixed with something akin to despair, which swept over our people at the news of President Kennedy's Jacqueline Bouvier and U.S. Representative John F. Kennedy belonged to the same social circle and were formally introduced by a mutual friend, journalist Charles L. Bartlett, at a dinner party in May 1952. Ethel's alcoholic, philandering brother, George Skakel Jr., actually booted Billings in the a** at the church, knocking him into the aisle. The piece featured here was a gift from Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings, a high school friend and lifelong confidant who helped Kennedy amass his scrimshaw collection, which included more than 30 . On school breaks, Jack often brought Billings home with him, sparking Joe Kennedy to complain to his wife, Rose, "Do we have to have that q***r around all summer?". Extent: 82 digital pages. Lem Billings andBobby Kennedy Jr became close after JFK's death and allegedly took drugs together. ISBN: 0306816237 ISBN13: 9780306816239 Jack and Lem: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship by David Pitts See Customer Reviews Select Format Hardcover $22.29 - $25.49 Paperback $12.09 - $19.04 Select Condition Like New -- Very Good Unavailable Good $12.09 Acceptable Unavailable New $19.04 He was 65 years old. Trio arrested during crackdown fall foul of national security law. "The result is this book, which looks at Jackie before she was Jackie the Jackie that we all think we know. When we first happen upon her, her face is angled away, as though she's cocking her ear for a nightingale. Copyright 2023 Irish Studio LLC All rights reserved. Gore Vidal, the writer who claimed he viewed homosexuality as normal as heterosexuality, disparaged the JFK-Billings relationship during the Kennedy administration. I'm not that kind of boy.. 'They make fun of my voice. While the Kennedy family had accepted Billings into their inner circle because of his tight friendship with JFK, Ethel Kennedy's family, the scandalous Republican Skakels of Greenwich, Connecticut, weren't so accepting. Jerry Oppenheimer For Dailymail.com. Jack was small and inquisitive, a scion of the Catholic, new-money Kennedys. Forests of redbud and magnolia are thickening around us, and somehow they're all in on the secret, and Kay Starr sings "Wheel of Fortune" on the radio, and, during the second chorus, I sneeze, and Jack says, "Perfectly in tune, Lem," and then the song is over, and we're pulling up in front of . Arrangements are pending at Billings Funeral Home & Cremation Services, Elkhart. with remote attendance, or to view the service at alater time, all you need to do is click on the service, scroll down to the bottom of the obituary, and click on the links provided. 'It was kept 'very hush-hush,' recalled the music teacher James Hejduk. descendant of John LeMoyne, a French physician and Dr. Francis LeMoyne, an abolitionist ', Another classmate, Brian Carroll, remembered 'this odd character' Billings, who was always on campus fawning over Bobby: '"Bobby, are you eating? Quirk immediately pegged Billings as gay, noting his "high, screechy laugh," and "high nasal whine of a voice.". She contacted the headmaster on several occasions to ask about the boy's well- being. '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. Getty Images Billings, for his part, never married and eventually became a marketing executive and worked on the John F. Kennedy Center for the. I was told by Billings, "Nothing ever goes directly to Ethel." Young Jfk. ", One of Jack's five sisters, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, found it hard to describe her brother's relationship with Billings, once stating, "It was a complete liberation of the spirit" for Jack, and that her brother was a "complete liberated man when he was with Lem. The funeral will be held in Pittsburgh. Wanting to be around family . education of free black Americans after the Confederate States of America was They continued to Princeton An intimate of Billings, writer Lawrence J. Quirk, claimed that Billings, whom he met in 1946 when both worked in Jack Kennedy's first congressional campaign, had confided to him that their relationship did, in fact, involve sex acts 'a friendship that included oral sex, with Jack always on the receiving end. President Kennedy was a completely liberated man when he was with Lem.'. 'He seemed a very pleasant fellow,' said Bontecou, a classmate of Bobby's. Cherrydale? He was born to Otis and Anna Speer on July 14, 1928, in Glasgow, Montana. 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, reports Daily Mail. Kirk LeMoyne Billings, a retired advertising executive and a friend of President John F. Kennedy, died Wednesday at his Manhattan apartment. (Video) Caroline Kennedy on JFK's secret recordings, (Video) JFK's Women: Scandals Revealed | CBC, (Video) July 20, 1962 - President John F. Kennedy arriving home for weekend, (Video) President Kennedy's family reflects on his 100th birthday, 2. Kirk LeMoyne Lem Billings (April 15, 1916 May 28, 1981) was a close friend of President John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family. 'We would get a telephone call from that funny old nurse, who sounded like an old-time nanny, and she would say, "It's President Kennedy's birthday and Bobby needs to go to Mass and observe that," and my husband would have to take him,' recalled his widow. It only got worse with the drugs. While the photo of Kennedy cozying up to Monroe is the best known of him with one of his purported lovers, other far less public snapshots show the flip side of Kennedy's intimate relationships. Like the rest of the free world, Billings was devastated when President Kennedy was assassinated. 'He played with Bobby, if you will, more than a father probably would, was just devoted to him, and there was reallyl honest affection between them.'. 'It was disgusting and it wasn't my idea of having a good, healthy time with my hawks, so I let him do his falconry in the dead cow pit, and I went and chased rabbits in the woods,' said Bierregaard, still revolted years later by the memory. the Navy, as described more fully in the separate Wikipedia biography of John It just reeks of arrogance, but I did not experience Bobby as arrogant.'. Ancestors. 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. As Lindsey Cole Miesmer, a member of the class of 1972, who later became one of the school's trustees, noted, 'There was no school with any structure that Bobby could go to because Bobby was in trouble emotionally. 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. 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. One of the leaders of the group, Rob O. After it was all over, Bobby left home with $600, and traveled to California, sometimes riding the rails, and ended up in Berkeley where he bought drugs with money he panhandled. Billings, was a prep school roommate and then They both took drugs. Billings Funeral Home. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. "Because of him, I was never lonely. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., David Kenne. 7:44 PM. ', As Quirk further observed, 'Jack was in love with Lem being in love with him and considered him the ideal follower-adorer.'. 'Sometimes I answered the phone and I would hear her wispy voice, and then I would get my husband to talk to her.'. I'd known him then for a few months and knew he'd do anything. Because Jack had no intention of ever being a faithful husband. ", "I thought, 'What a great cat-bird seat he would've had, and wouldn't he make a great narrator?' Sydney Taylor is a writer who focuses on News and Entertainment topics. According to Palfrey classmates, it was claimed that Bobby simply wrote his name - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - at the top and sent it in, and got accepted. Claudette informed Vic that she was told that Lem's lack of a department funeral and motorcade would prevent news headlines about Lem's "dirty dealings". Billings maintained close ties to the Kennedys and their children As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Share your favorite stories with other history buffs in the IrishCentral History Facebook group. One of those he told was his roommate Jamie Fanning. No, I wished he was only a pothead. Lem was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1916 Clarendon? He served with the Navy in the Pacific during World War II, then attended the Harvard Graduate School of Business. Lem Billings, from a distinguished old American Protestant family, was taller, bigger, stronger, with a high-pitched voice and a loud laugh. When the President was assassinated in Dallas, Lem was in Gore Vidal, the writer who claimed he viewed homosexuality as normal as heterosexuality, disparaged the JFK-Billings relationship during the Kennedy administration. Make a life-giving gesture. him to drink. Jacqueline Kennedy was reportedly unhappy about her husband and Billings' three decade long relationship.