This was at the end of their final presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York in October, 2008. Lem Billings passed away from a heart attack at 65 in 1981. The only ties he now had to his family while in school was Lem Billings. Lem Billings died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack on May 28, 1981, at the age of 65. 'I had written a report on Bobby, and Billings answered it and didn't agree with me, and that's when I thought, "Uh-oh, he's in charge here. A planetarium-like darkness, with the two of them swimming like moons. Beyond the senator, young Bobby's aunt Jackie had inquired about his welfare but never visited.'. 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. 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. I was told by Billings, "Nothing ever goes directly to Ethel." Lem was John F Kennedy's best friend. Like the rest of the free world, Billings was devastated when President Kennedy was assassinated. In Jackie & Me, both Jackie and Billings are devoted to the future president and it comes at personal cost. If you need a funeral home you can trust, call today. . The teenagers worked together on their classs yearbook, and Billings became sexually attracted to the handsome young Kennedy. There's something half buried in that remark, and I don't know how to disinter it. 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. ", 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.". Enter your email below to have our funeral service notifications delivered to you. After Kennedys election Billings would frequently be an overnight guest, which supposedly upset the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy. From Algonquin Books. through his life. But the one thing that struck me even at that tender age was that I felt Lem was just obsessed with Bobby. Quirk claims he first met Billings at Kennedys first congressional campaignand, as they became closer, he says Billings claimed that his relationship with Kennedy was sexual. Advocate Contributors November 22 2013 4:00 AM EST In photos. When we first happen upon her, her face is angled away, as though she's cocking her ear for a nightingale. As George Terrien, Ethel's brother-in-law declared, 'Everyone knew Lem was queer - the Kennedys, the Skakels, everyone.'. Michelotti-Sawyers Mortuary and Crematory is a locally and independently owned and operated full service funeral home and crematory. Jerry Oppenheimer is a New York Times bestselling author who has written two books about the Kennedys. The content produced by YourTango is for informational and educational purposes only. I don't know whether she wrote to Bobby, but she certainly didn't telephone or visit him. "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 his second year at Millbrook, Bobby began boasting that he was doing certain drugs intravenously - shooting up, like any street junkie. , In office January 20, 1961 November 22, 1963. Lem Billings, from a distinguished old American Protestant family, was taller, bigger, stronger, with a high-pitched voice and a loud laugh. His name was Lem Billings. Billings had once told Bobby that when. If we had made that very different choice, we would've gone down a completely different road. ', 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. 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 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 we speed past all those destinations before steering up Old Dominion Drive. 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. 16. Try our online preplanning tool. 'I've just met the smartest little boy! I'd known him then for a few months and knew he'd do anything. Fanning, a self- described wild child at the time, recalled Bobby's visits to the pit, which he had witnessed, as 'grotesque. LeMoyne Billings and Ethel Kennedy attend Liza Minnelli Concert on May 23, 1970 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. 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. Gore Vidal, the writer who claimed he viewed homosexuality as normal as heterosexuality, disparaged the JFK-Billings relationship during the Kennedy administration. He refers to virtually all his girls that way. He once called Billings the 'chief f****t at Camelot.' Later Years. Wright said he never heard from Bobby's mother after the decision was made to boot her son. 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. 2023 Meadowrockalpacas. Her general lilt, as best I can tell, is interrogative, but why should that be a surprise? ', 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. Hidden away high up on a bookshelf was a small bronze bust of his father. It only got worse with the drugs. Ethel Kennedy issued the requisite concerned parent statement, calling Bobby a 'fine boy, and we have always been proud of him. '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. He had an older sister, Ruth (Speer) Steele, older brother, Eugene "Bud" Speer, and younger half-brother Lawrence "Larry" Payant. Billings and Kennedy took 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. At Pomfret, Bobby didn't change his ways, despite his pot bust, and expulsion from Millbrook. Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings was a bumbling giant, the offspring of a prominent but cash-poor Protestant family. ', But Billings was embarrassed about his effeminate mannerisms he'd remain publicly closeted for his lifetime. Then she leans toward Jack and, in a whisper stagy enough for me to hear, says, "I like your friend.". He truly loved the Kennedy's and as Jack's best friend. 14:55 EDT 13 Oct 2015. 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. Secret Service agents William Greer (driving) and Roy Kellerman are in the front seats. In her memoir, Times To Remember, published eleven years after Jack's assassination in Dallas in 1963, she wrote that Billings had "remained Jack's lifelong close friend, confidant, sharer in old memories and new experiences", He has really been part of "our family" since that first time he showed up at our house as one of "Jack's surprises. The President never failed to introduce Lem formally to visiting heads of state, dignitaries, and celebrities, but the introduction was never simply a matter of "I would like you to meet my friend, LeMoyne Billings." "He'd introduce me as Congressman Billings or Senator Billings, and even General Billings," Lem would later recall . Click to browse the Lem Billings Personal Papers KLBPP-001-003-p0015. But I'm stuck with the Kennedys emotionally, and I will be to the end of my life.". I still to this day see him standing there in his black necktie that he wore every day over a blue oxford Brooks Brothers shirt and a beat-up tweed jacket, and wearing the wildest bell-bottoms that were purple with Day-Glo green stripes like he was some soul band guy, and in his funky boots. Genealogy profile for Lem Billings Kirk LeMoyne Billings (1916 - 1981) - Genealogy Genealogy for Kirk LeMoyne Billings (1916 - 1981) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. The young JFK, messing around with Lem Billings during their Choate years. ', White House visitor: Billings often spent the night at the White House, which upset Jackie Kennedy. It just reeks of arrogance, but I did not experience Bobby as arrogant.'. Infuriated, his mother demanded: 'Just leave home. A telephone conversation between President Kennedy and Lem Billings. I am sure the good Lord knows that heaven is Jesus and Lem and Jack and Bobby loving one another.". Lem Billings. Irked, Joe Kennedy would sneeringly ask his wife, Rose, 'Do we have to have that queer around all summer? 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. 11:10 EDT 13 Oct 2015 Girls in these days are instructed to shoot out a clean, firm thread of inquiry at all times. "And we could have made a very different choice. Credit: JFK Presidential Library and Museum. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., David Kenne. Bayard explores the beginnings of the romance between the future Mrs. Kennedy, then the inquiring photographer for the Washington Times-Herald, and young Congressman John F. Kennedy, with Jack's best friend, Lem Billings, serving as a "go-between" for the lovers in 1950s Washington, D.C. ', Another classmate, Brian Carroll, remembered 'this odd character' Billings, who was always on campus fawning over Bobby: '"Bobby, are you eating? Kirk LeMoyne Billings, a retired advertising executive and a friend of President John F. Kennedy, died Wednesday at his Manhattan apartment. Keep reading for an exclusive excerpt from Jackie & Me. ', The Kennedy patriarch, Joe, a noted philanderer himself, was suspicious of Billings' sexual preference from the start of his son's close friendship with him. What happened when Jackie Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth II met? 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. Featuring interviews with Ben Bradlee, Gore Vidal, Ted Sorenson, friends, family, and many . '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. Lem married Rolla Jean Auer on September 17, 1950. 'I never could figure out why Ethel would let Lem have such an intimate relationship,' he once declared. A wider smile than I would have guessed possible. Lem His classmates were worried that he was going to kill himself, that we were going to find him dead.'. The story about Lem Billings '39 and JFK was very interesting and even moving (cover story, April 12). Although Mr. Billings never served the President in an official capacity, he was a frequent guest at the White House. Lem also worked for JFK in the West Virginia and Wisconsin primaries F. When the President was assassinated in Dallas, Lem was in Unlike Millbrook and Pomfret, Palfrey Street was a day school, so Billings arranged with the Brode family of Cambridge to house and feed him, and watch out for him. Kirk LeMoyne Lem Billings (April 15, 1916 May 28, 1981) was a close friend of President John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family. A falconer, Bobby kept a pigeon-size sparrow hawk that flew loose in the small room. Of the Kennedys, only Bobby's uncle Ted had shown up at Millbrook to see how his nephew was doing. I thought, anything goes with this guy. 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. Arrangements are pending at Billings Funeral Home & Cremation Services, Elkhart. Extent: 82 digital pages. Ancestors. Wanting to be around family . 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. 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. 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. Kirk LeMoyne Billings and John F. Kennedy. 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. In his heartfelt and rather candid eulogy, Bobby said, '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. But by the time he was with his second roommate, Jamie Fanning, the room had just a few photos, and hippie posters had replaced the funereal black sheets. Jack's best friend was Lem, and he would want to remind everyone of that today. at the Manhattan advertising firm Lennen & Newell. After Jack Kennedy's election to the presidency, Billings was a constant presence and overnight guest at the White House. 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". Lem's father died in 1933 placing additional strain on the family's "Because of him," Lem Billings once said of President Kennedy, "I was never lonely"