'Yesterday was Jack's birthday. Lem Billings is a member of famous Celebrity list. A different side of JFK: John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings met atChoate Rosemary Hall and became lifelong friends. But this may, in fact, just be gossip. 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. [17] In 1956 he was an usher at the wedding of Kennedy's sister Jean to Stephen Edward Smith. Click to browse the Lem Billings Personal Papers KLBPP-001-003-p0015. According to Pitts, Billings never recovered from the death of his friend, suffering from a "deep depression" in the weeks and months after President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. As Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee recalled much later, "I suppose it's known that Lem was gay.. 'It was very hard for him, but he wanted to do it and he stuck with it,' Lucretia added. Each column is a city, with each color representing . "[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. [23] He represented the President when the alumni association unveiled Kennedy's portrait at Choate in May 1963. Kirk LeMoyne " Lem " Billings (April 15, 1916 - May 28, 1981) was an American businessman known for his close and long-time friendship with John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family. 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. Kennedy first met Billings when they were teenagers at a school called Choate. Those who knew Charles described him as a sour, angry man. He didn't want to share his friendship with Jack. Use Restriction Status: None. While web sleuths and conspiracy theorists were looking for the person who killed her . "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.". That he is believed to have been gay at a time when homosexuality was still illegal even being somewhat open about his sexuality, including within the powerful Kennedy clan sheds light on the strength of his ties to the family. 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. Billings was a prep school roommate of Kennedy, an usher at his wedding and a campaigner for his successful 1960 presidential bid. [10] In 1944 he received a commission in the U.S. 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 course, there was always Cape Cod in Massachusetts when the president wanted to be near the water,' Lem remarked. (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. 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. I'm not that kind of boy.' She had to submit questions in advance. For many other Americans as well, Bobby became the last best hope for resurrecting Camelot, for a return to the kind of liberal idealism that Jack had epitomized. Yesterday was Jack's birthday. In 2009, Robert Dallek published part of an interview with Barbara Gamerekian, a former White House aide, who named three prominent women, two secretaries nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle and a college sophomore who couldnt type (Alford) as a few of the sexual partners who helped the President release his daily tensions, often in the White House swimming pool or on official trips around the nation, where women were sometimes flown in on separate planes so that they could be available. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Private Policy and Terms of Use. Although Alford refused, she did not always have the self-confidence to say no: earlier, she had fellated a staff member in Jacks presence. [4], In 1939, Billings graduated from Princeton where he majored in art and architecture[5] and wrote his senior thesis on Tintoretto. And for Lem and Mark Chesmore, there's nothing more they enjoy doing than participating in their chosen sport of boxing. As the then-Senator stepped up for his turn, Williams admired his body. 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. Though his name isn't as well-known as that of his boyhood best friend, Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings was an important confidante for one of America's presidents and lived a life no less full of its own twists and turns. A crew jock, he met Jack at Choate, a boys' boarding school, in Wallingford, Connecticut (it is now co-ed). I'm enclosing a letter to Lem, which I wish you would forward, as I haven't any idea where he is. Needless to say, JFK may have had, in a sense, two widows. "[59], In 1964, Billings was named to select a memorial to Kennedy to be placed in the Kennedy Center. [16], On September 12, 1953, Billings was an usher at the wedding of Kennedy and Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. An autopsy report says Billings' cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head. 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. Smith, 433-4; see also: Smith, 113: "The only counterbalance to the [Kennedy] family's philistinism had been Lem Billings, whose passion for art and antiques had begun with his Princeton theses on Tintoretto, a precociously sophisticated study. 384 pages, $26.95 THE OLD black-and-white photograph shows two good-looking young men sitting close together on the back bumper of a car, their fingers touching gently as they fondle a dachshund pup. Soon I discovered that he glared with equal suspicion at anyone whose friendship with JFK postdated his own. It contained scores of photographs of himself and Jack in Europe, as well as a handwritten narrative. ", 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. (Note my reply) I think the interview I have reference to is less than a year ago! To begin with, why would JFK give him a private room at the white house, to come and go at his leisure? Lem Billings and John F Kennedy were practically inseparable in prep school. Billings would later spend nights in the White House where he had his own room, Schoolboy crush? Jack, Lem, and Caroline enjoying the water, Hyannis Port, 1963. Wikipedia (3 entries) edit. I was pleased to note that things picked up after your arrival,' referring to Montgomery's battle with Rommel at El Alamein. He became Jackies confidant and the trusted recipient of her views about the other women who flitted in and out of her husbands life. One famous shot shows the toddler John, Jr., a man who would also die tragically young, playing peek-a-boo under the desk. Sitelinks. But there is also an important story about race, and social class, to be told here. 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 The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. I have also studied the forensics of the assassination for 21 years. [11], After working on Kennedy's successful campaign for Congress in 1946, Billings toured seven Latin American countries with Robert F. "[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. Was this part of his commitment to the Presidents good health? It remains the worst such failure in the history of advertising agencies. 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. [26] When the First Lady was away, Billings organized White House dinner parties for the President and old friends,[27] and when the President traveled he kept the First Lady company. (Page 213), "Jack made a big difference in my life. 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. Lem Billings passed away from a heart attack at 65 in 1981. Lemmon died about 9 p.m. Wednesday at USC/Norris Cancer Center with his wife, actress Felicia Farr, two children and a stepdaughter at his bedside. He once called Billings the 'chief f****t at Camelot.' ', 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. Wiggins was serving a 28 years . Some of his partners saw the escape from monogamy as liberating too, understanding their romps with the President as special and carefree episodes that they were happy to flaunt. The two became friends, then roommates. 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.
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