As Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee recalled much later, "I suppose it's known that Lem was gay.. (Page 276). When Billings died of a heart attack in 1981, Bobby Jr gave the eulogy (From left to right: Lem Billings, Bobby Kennedy Jr andEthel Kennedy), Part of the family: From childhood to adulthood, Billings stayed close to Jack Kennedy and his family. 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 . Claire Potteris professor of history at The New School, and Executive Editor of Public Seminar. It remains the worst such failure in the history of advertising agencies. Gore Vidal, the writer who claimed he viewed homosexuality as normal as heterosexuality, disparaged the JFK-Billings relationship during the Kennedy administration. In addition to Lem, Kennedys bisexual brother in law, actor Peter Lawford, and novelist Gore Vidal, a relative of Jackies, were frequent visitors and playmates. 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. The evidence presented indicates that Jack found out . [20] He later said: "I realized that I did not want to work for the president because I felt it would change our relationship. While web sleuths and conspiracy theorists were looking for the person who killed her . JFK appeared to be in love with the idea of Billings being in love with him. 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. But straight men can have a gay side, and JFKs life was filled with prominent gay men, friendships which open the door to other histories. Poor guy. The 51-year-old daughter of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died Sept. 16 while working out at her Washington, D.C., gym. An autopsy report says Billings' cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. Although Alford refused, she did not always have the self-confidence to say no: earlier, she had fellated a staff member in Jacks presence. (Page 95), Jack and Lem on leave, Palm Beach, 1944"It's not clear whether Lem wanted to join the navy and see combat because Jack had, or because he wanted it for himself. 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. 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 . Lem Billings died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack on May 28, 1981, at the age of 65. Having been given special access to the Billings papers by Robert Kennedy, Jr., Pitts was either unable to verify a sexual relationship, or he was unwilling to cite his source. 12 pdf icon; leading cause of death data, including firearm, homicide, and drug poisoning mortality data, and infant mortality . John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings, right, who was a classmate from the Choate School and Princeton University, outside a drugstore, ca. Kennedy. "Early on in their friendship, Lem sent Jack such a note and Jack replied in their usual jocular way, adding in parentheses, 'Please don't write to me on toilet paper any more. While Billings' missive is long gone, a startled Kennedy responded, 'Please don't write to me on toilet paper anymore. Lem Billings andBobby Kennedy Jr became close after JFK's death and allegedly took drugs together. 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. We might even call it a romantic friendship. (Page 100). Billings had been a prep school roommate of John F. Kennedy, an usher at his wedding, and a campaigner for his successful 1960 presidential bid. "Because of him, I was never lonely," Billings said once. He escorted Mrs. Stephen Smith, sister of the late President, to . [31] He accompanied the President to church,[32] launched a kite for the President's daughter Caroline,[33] and delivered pet hamsters to the Kennedy children. "[58] Though Gore Vidal thought Billings was "absolutely nobody," he also believed "it was a good idea that Jack had somebody he could trust like that around him." I'd read a bit about Lem Billings in various Kennedy bios . When they arrived at the cemetery, it was already in place to be lowered. 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 remained in the closet until his death in 1981 at the age of 65, according to Pitts. In 1964, Billings was named to head a ten-person committee to select a memorial to Kennedy to be placed in the Kennedy Center. It is a historic rural cemetery. Billings would later spend nights in the White House where he had his own room, Schoolboy crush? Lem Billings is a member of famous Celebrity list. Wiggins was serving a 28 years . 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. In 1958, her cousin Gore Vidal brought playwright Tennessee Williams to the Kennedy home in Palm Beach, FL. [24], Billings visited the White House for most weekends during the Kennedy Administration. [18], In 1960, on leave from his job, he worked on Kennedy's presidential campaign. 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. When Jack reached home, the two friends greeted each other like there was no tomorrow." Lem Billings may have been present for, but just outside the frame, of these pictures. Of course, he had always loved the Cape and was completely happy there.'" Jackie and Vidal werent cousins. "I just became fascinated with Lem because he was a closeted but as they used to say 'practicing homosexual,' and he was very much part of the inner Kennedy circle from very early in his life," Bayard said. However, he avoided the notoriety of coming out even after Kennedys death, perhaps because he feared that it would draw more negative attention to the extended Kennedy family, which soon struggled with a range of scandals: Chappaquidick, alcoholism, divorce and drugs were but a few. [1] The Billings family were Episcopalians and Republicans.[2]. Naval Academy. 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JFKs sex life, and his attachments to men, also needs to be better understood for what it reveals about his inner life, and for a moment in United States political history when sex itself was undergoing seismic changes. JFKs numerous affairs (before, during and after his marriage to Jackie) and his friendships with gay men suddenly had a social and cultural context that was neither gay or straight, but a harbinger of the sexual freedom and experimentation that would soon be championed in the counterculture and the mainstream. Describing his friend as a "very normal, regular boy," Billings said his favorite of Jack's characteristics was his light spirit: "I've never known anyone in my life with such a wonderful humor and the wonderful ability to make one laugh and to have a good time. [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. The two became friends, then roommates. 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. . Lem was a virtual fixture in the Kennedy family who even had his own room at the White House. But was reportedly upset that her husband spent so much time with him, and that he often stayed overnight at the White House. At one point, he is said to have remarked: "After I go, there'll be no more Kennedys.". Billings was a prep school roommate of Kennedy, an usher at his wedding and a campaigner for his successful 1960 presidential bid. Description: In this interview, Billings discusses John F. Kennedy's time at Choate, his family life, and their first trip to Europe together, among other issues. 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. His name was Lem Billings. And all the while, Lem Billings was there: waiting, serving, comforting and helping the Kennedy family adjust to the public glare. 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. 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. [63][25]:505 He maintained close ties to the Kennedys and their children for the rest of his life, frequently socializing with Bobby Kennedy Jr., to whom he became almost a surrogate father, and Christopher Lawford. 'What the hell have you been doing? Billings worked on the 1960 campaign, and then lived at the White House for long stretches of time, a room permanently set aside for his visits. One reason is that, in retrospect, the Kennedy presidency provides a transition from the years of what historian David K. Johnson calls the lavender scare and the unbuttoned, experimental 1960s that launched the gay rights movement. 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. As the previous article mentions more has to be explored regarding the relationship between Lem and JFK!