Bobby had believed Billings' every word. Lem Billings and John F. Kennedy met as teenagers at their Connecticut prep school and remained lifelong friends. Mr. Billings and Mr. Kennedy. Billings Funeral Home. Fanning, a self- described wild child at the time, recalled Bobby's visits to the pit, which he had witnessed, as 'grotesque. "Because of him, I was never lonely. JFK appeared to be in love with the idea of Billings being in love with him. 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. whom Lem was also close to, died, Lem became exceedingly depressed and that caused Inside JFKs Intimate Relationship With Gay Best Friend Who Had His Own Room In The White House, Britney Spears Blames Her Mom For Conservatorship Inside Lynne Spearss Complicated Role In Singers Life, Details About Kristen Stewarts Fiance Dylan Meyers & Their Adorably Casual Proposal, The Horniest Animal In The World Is Not What You Think It Is, I'd Rather Get Pregnant With My Gay Best Friend Than My Husband, Teacher Wants Student Removed From His Class Because The Kid's Parents Don't Approve Of His Marriage, Jeffrey Epstein's Relationship With Princess Diana Explored In New Book. I'd known him then for a few months and knew he'd do anything. 'Yesterday was Jack's birthday. Wanting to be around family . Irked, Joe Kennedy would sneeringly ask his wife, Rose, 'Do we have to have that queer around all summer? Then she leans toward Jack and, in a whisper stagy enough for me to hear, says, "I like your friend.". One of those he told was his roommate Jamie Fanning. He was kind of sinister. From the book Jackie & Me by Louis Bayard. Lem Billings was a strapping, bespectacled, 'grizzly- bearish' fellow with big feet and a large head topped by curly, dirty blond hair, who always seemed to be smiling. "He also reveals that there was this crucial moment," says Bayard. She might be a cashier at the Montelle Pharmacy or Finland's deputy chief of mission, and you won't know until you've pulled up in front of her apartment building and seen her tottering through the front gate, a blonde in a crew-neck cardigan or a brunette in a bullet bra, and it's always the latter who raises her hand for you to kiss and the former who comes at you straight on like an encyclopedia salesman, and whoever it is remains "Miss" in our conversation until such time as the business is consummated, at which point she devolves into her component parts. A unique and lasting tribute for a . their summer trip through Europe prior to World War II. A telephone conversation between President Kennedy and Lem Billings. Kennedy was unwell through much of his childhood, beginning with a near-deadly case of scarlet . Lem married Rolla Jean Auer on September 17, 1950. The only ties he now had to his family while in school was Lem Billings. 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. Lem married Rolla Jean Auer on September 17, 1950. All Rights Reserved. We have 2 volunteers within fifty miles of your requested photo location. "Will we be chauffeuring her fianc, too? And it was pretty common, of course in those days and that culture, for men not to be that way.". The Brodes didn't mind that Billings was gay and had such a close relationship with Bobby. Gore Vidal, the writer who claimed he viewed homosexuality as normal as heterosexuality, disparaged the JFK-Billings relationship during the Kennedy administration. 14:55 EDT 13 Oct 2015. Make a life-giving gesture. No, I wished he was only a pothead. His latest book, The Kardashians: An American Drama, will be published in September. While Lem Billings was an actual Kennedy intimate, narrator Lem is reminiscent of The Great Gatsby's Nick Carraway, and his fictional reminiscences structure the novel around the triangular friendship he shares with Jack and Jackie in the years leading up to their wedding in the early 1950s. This was at the end of their final presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York in October, 2008. Billings remarked (at the end of the story) that had he married and settled down, he would not have been happier than he was as . at the Manhattan advertising firm Lennen & Newell. The teenagers worked together on their classs yearbook, and Billings became sexually attracted to the handsome young Kennedy. Jack Kennedy and Lem Billings met at Choate and remained friends until the Dallas gunfire that ended Kennedy's life thirty years later. 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 . education of free black Americans after the Confederate States of America was Im not that kind of boy.. But Billings remained closeted publicly for his life. The eyes even wider. ", 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.". In her memoir, published eleven years after the first Kennedy assassination, she wrote that Billings had 'remained Jack's lifelong close friend, confidante, sharer in old memories and new experiences . In school JFK and Lem were close. Kennedy and Billings met in 1933 in their sophomore year at Choate Rosemary Hall, an exclusive Connecticut prep school. 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. 'He seemed a very pleasant fellow,' said Bontecou, a classmate of Bobby's. Read More. Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings and Mary Lasker attend a party at the New York City home of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. On June 14, 1977. Only a very liberal school [like Pomfret] that needed money would take him.'. Son of Frederick Tremaine Billings and Romaine Elizabeth (LeMoyne) Billings. After the assassination of RFK in 1968, the flamboyant Billings transferred his obsessive affection for Jack, to handsome teenager Bobby Jr. David Pitts, the author of 'Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship,' told me, '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. But the man married to Jackie Kennedy was quietly chided for his compulsive philandering. It was all quite bizarre. "And who should that be?". 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." Copyright 2022 by Louis Bayard. 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. '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. 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.' Lem Billings and John F Kennedy were practically inseparable in prep school. One of the leaders of the group, Rob O. "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 . In Lem, Jack found a confidant and caretaker; Jack was frequently ill while at Choate, but Lem kept his spirits high . I thought, anything goes with this guy. 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? Billings Funeral Home | 812 Baldwin Street | Elkhart, IN 46514 | Tel: 574-264-2425. I was told by Billings, "Nothing ever goes directly to Ethel." 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. of adding a fruit flavor to disguise the sodium citrate taste. Copyright 2023 Irish Studio LLC All rights reserved. '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. Senator Edward M. Kennedy will speak at a memorial service tomorrow morning at 10 A.M. at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, 90th Street and Fifth Avenue. After the assassination of RFK in 1968, the flamboyant Billings transferred his obsessive affection for Jack, to handsome teenager Bobby Jr. David Pitts, the author of "Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship," told me, "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. 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.. ', 'It was that kind of talk, more bragging, but I believed him. " Bayard says of Billings. Since she considered young Bobby the most difficult and troublesome of her seven sons and three daughters (with another child the daughter Rory -- due at any moment), she decided to hand him off to Lem Billings, and moreover, sent him far away to boarding school, in the rural Hudson Valley of New York State. The mother of the house, Joanne 'Joey' Brode became a virtual surrogate mother to Bobby who notes years later, 'Ethel didn't even call Bobby on his birthday. Was it best that he stay and risk the possibility of injuring himself seriously or completely, or was it best for him, as nasty as it was, to ask a Kennedy to leave.'. Infuriated, his mother demanded: 'Just leave home. By While he told Bobby that he should find a woman like his aunt Jackie, none of Bobby's three wives would be anything like her. Quirk immediately pegged Billings as gay, noting his 'high, screechy laugh,' and 'high nasal whine of a voice.' It was Bobby Kennedy Jr. who gave the eulogy. 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. 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. Kirk LeMoyne Billings, a retired advertising executive and a friend of President John F. Kennedy, died Wednesday at his Manhattan apartment. We're due at Bobby and Ethel's that night, but Jack instead cuts across Chain Bridge. 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 first time Kirk Lemoyne 'Lem' Billings was introduced to Bobby Kennedy Jr. the two spent several hours alone in the boy's room at fabled Hickory Hill, Robert and Ethel Kennedy's historic, sprawling estate, in bucolic McLean, Virginia. '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 said. Bobby, do you have clothes?" Jack for his health reasons and Lem for his eye sight. Our website services, content and products are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The Kennedys tolerated his homosexuality, which was considered taboo at the time, Lawrence J. Quirk, the author of'The Kennedys in Hollywood' said Billings and JFK's relationship turned sexual at a point. James Kirchick: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, [Top 10] Albion Online Best Solo Builds That Are OP, FamilyTreeDNA - Genetic Testing for Ancestry, Family History & Genealogy, The BEST 18+ Mods for Stardew Valley - Modding Magic, Easiest and Basic Beginner Piano Sheet Music PDF With Letters, Reach Out Of The Darkness, Friend & Lover - Qobuz, Alternate Reality Games: The Who, What, And Why of ARGs, Ashina Castle (Revisited) - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Walkthrough & Guide, 15 Of The Best Video-Based ARGs On YouTube, Sekiro Shadows Die Twice - Ashina Castle Walkthrough, Ashina Castle | Sekiro Shadows Die Twice Walkthrough - Sekiro Guide and Walkthrough, Loss Payee and Lienholder addresses and contact information updated daily free list | CSS Insurance Services, llc, Top 32 Backyard Birds in Texas (Free ID Chart) - Bird Advisors, Hot chocolate season is here! 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. claims bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer, Lyndon B. Johnson demanded to be sworn in alongside Jackie Kennedy, How you can learn Gaelic literature and culture online with a top Irish university, The story behind Ireland's favorite song, The Cranberries "Zombie", How the Irish (and Welsh) invented romantic love. times, Lem might have been described as a "confirmed bachelor," although RELATED:Jeffrey Epstein's Relationship With Princess Diana Explored In New Book. Her general lilt, as best I can tell, is interrogative, but why should that be a surprise? , How old was the Queen when she met JFK? Yesterday was Jack's birthday. Lem Billings had heard about the school from Adam Yarmolinsky, a one-time trusted aide to both RFK and JFK, whose son had graduated a year before Bobby's arrival. Jfk And Jackie Kennedy. to Frederic Tremaine Billings, a prominent physician and Romaine LeMoyne (direct 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. 2023byTango Publishing Corporation All Rights Reserved. Jack Kennedy and Lem Billings met at Choate and remained friends until the Dallas gunfire that ended Kennedy's life thirty years later. It's when we're crossing back over Chain Bridge that she rouses herself to ask: "Jack, what color is your car?". Jackie, I imagine, is now asking the name of Bobby's daughter or wondering if Eunice will be there and which one is Pat? I'm not that kind of boy.. A Princeton friend and former business partner confided to Pitts about Billings that after Jack's death: "He didn't want to live anymore," and other friends claimed that he never recovered from the loss. lifelong close friend of President John F. Kennedy. 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. Lem Billings. Bobby's uncle, Ted, who had just faced the Chappaquiddick scandal, flew in from his senate office in Washington to stand up for his nephew. reason I never got married.". According to Jerry Oppenheimer, author of RFK Jr.: Robert F. Kennedy and the Dark Side of the Dream, Kennedy responded, please dont write to me on toilet paper anymore. Jerry Oppenheimer For Dailymail.com Lem Billings had a remarkable friendship with JFK that lasted from 1932, when the two met as classmates in prep school, until JFK's assassination in 1963. Did the 35th US President John F Kenned have a secret gay relationship with his childhood friend Lem Billings? Get out of my life.'. And seated close to Kennedy is his shirtless, tanned and oiled best friend forever, his very gay chum, Kirk LeMoyne 'Lem' Billings. 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. Of course, that gave most ofus the thought - does this guy have a job other than caring for Bobby? After Jack Kennedy's election to the presidency, Billings was a constant presence and overnight guest at the White House. But Bayard says that the reality of their marriage including years of reporting about Jack's infidelities gave him a "degree of empathy" for Jackie when approaching her character in the novel. He noted that everywhere Jack went, Billings was sure to follow, like a puppy dog. Supposedly Billings had written a love note on a piece of toilet paper while the two were still in school. According to biographer James Spada, When Kennedy tired of her, he passed her off to his brother in 1962. He thought 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. 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. '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. 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. Anyone can read what you share. Billings and Kennedy took ', Drugs had become part of the scene at Millbrook, and Bobby would become a major player. Billings, LeMoyne Date (s) of Materials: 11 February 1942-31 December 1946 Folder Description: This folder contains letters to John F. Kennedy from his friend Kirk Lemoyne (Lem) Billings on subjects such as Kennedy's health, Kennedy's Naval service, and the Pacific Ocean Theater of World War II. Reviews: 95% of readers found this page helpful, Address: 743 Stoltenberg Center, Genovevaville, NJ 59925-3119, Hobby: Surfing, Sailing, Listening to music, Web surfing, Kitesurfing, Geocaching, Backpacking. 'They make fun of my voice. Brode had liberal views, didn't mind that Bobby smoked pot with Lem Billings in Bobby's room. Or see our headlights slicing through the trees? "People think I'm a joke," he once acknowledged. The enthusiastic pre-adolescent regaled Billings - a New York advertising executive, one of John F. Kennedy's closest confidantes and a closeted homosexual - with stories about his pet collection. In 1965, Mrs. Kennedy invited Billings to accompany her and her children to England for the unveiling of a memorial to Kennedy at Runnymede. The Brodes friends included a number of gay men, among them such openly gay politicians as Barney Frank and Gerry Stuuds. ', White House visitor: Billings often spent the night at the White House, which upset Jackie Kennedy. 'And there he was hunting rats out of that pile of dead sheep and cow carcasses. book review of Jack and Lem, The New Haven Register interviewed the author and Funeral homes; Help and advice. Kirk LeMoyne Billings, a retired advertising executive and a friend of President John F. Kennedy, died Wednesday at his Manhattan apartment. Ethel's alcoholic, philandering brother, George Skakel Jr., actually booted Billings in the a** at the church, knocking him into the aisle. Lem Billings was the ultimate "wing man." Billings was quietly gay, at a time when such things were not admitted to, particularly for those people who wanted to stay in high society. President Kennedy was a completely liberated man when he was with Lem.'. How chilly it is for March. Joseph Kennedy Sr. called him "my second son," and he . President Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline, and Texas governor John Connally with his wife, Nellie, in the presidential limousine, minutes before the assassination. 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. 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 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. 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. David Marciano - Steve Billings (2008, recurring 2005-2007) Benito Martinez - David Aceveda (2002-2008) . 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?". 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. David Pitts, author of 'Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship'said Lem was a gay man and he had a 14-year-old, good-looking kid living in his house with him and there have been rumors because of that. When the President was assassinated in Dallas, Lem was in White House and advised Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in her redecoration of the 'I've just met the smartest little boy! ", But Billings was embarrassed about his effeminate mannerisms - he'd remain publicly closeted for his lifetime. In June 1961, just months after Kennedy began his presidential term, he and Jackie visited Buckingham Palace, where a black tie banquet was hosted in the President's honour. The first lady, Jackie, had something of a love-hate relationship with Billings. Lem had several jobs including selling Coca-Cola dispensers to drugstores, working If you have recently lost a family member or friend, we hope that you will accept our condolences. 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,' recalled classmate John Cuetera, who became a psychologist. a year so that he and Kennedy could graduate from Choate together in 1935," 121 likes. Billings Funeral Home - Woodward Add Photos Add a Memory Henry Leroy Ray Henry Leroy Ray Woodward - Henry was born June 11,1955 in Amarillo TX. Kirk LeMoyne Billings and John F. Kennedy. Born 15 Apr 1916 in Pittsburgh, Allegheny, Pennsylvania, United States. And it's a kind of interesting love triangle between these three fascinating people.". But it was the only boarding school that Lem Billings could find that would admit him. 'He almost did things to shock you on purposeIt was a pretty dark, grim time; he was miserable and he was angry. The Letter JFK Wrote His Secret Lover Before He Died, 5. Mark Bontecou, a scion of the wealthy Bontecou family of Millbrook, which had once owned a good part of the land on which Millbrook School resided, also recalled how Billings was a constant companion of Bobby's during the school year. I understand he's not worth it.". 2023 Meadowrockalpacas. Mr. Billings and Mr. Kennedy were roommates at Choate and then at Princeton before Mr. Kennedy transferred to Harvard. 'We'd have these conversations in our room at night, lying there before we'd fall asleep [Bobby on the top bunk, Fanning on the lower], and he told me that when you go to somebody's house always ask to use the bathroom and check in their medicine cabinet because they always have good pills that you can steal. Extent: 82 digital pages. Mind you, there's nothing in that honorific Miss to signify a lady of distinction. 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'. Bobby was an edgy, edgy guy. "Yesterday was Jack's birthday. 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. Her knees are drawn protectively to her chest, and there's something quite exposed about her.