Mr. Billings and Mr. Kennedy were roommates at Choate and then at Princeton before Mr. Kennedy transferred to Harvard. When the President was assassinated in Dallas, Lem was in 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. Because Jack had no intention of ever being a faithful husband. and Jack first met at Choate Rosemary Hall in 1933 when Lem was 17 and Jack was Bayard's novel takes place primarily in the months leading up to Jack and Jackie's wedding on Sept. 12, 1953. 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? He was 65 years old. a commission in the U.S. 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.'. And seated close to Kennedy is his shirtless, tanned and oiled best friend forever, his very gay chum, Kirk LeMoyne 'Lem' Billings. And George Terrian, the alcoholic husband of Ethel Kennedy's alcoholic, pill-popping sister, Georgeann, told me in interviews for my book "The Other Mrs. Kennedy" that, "Everyone in the family knew Lem was q***r - the Kennedys, the Skakels, everyone.". Doesn't she hear the car's tires on the gravel? 121 likes. 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. 'But Bobby was doing a little more than some of the rest of us - a little more and maybe harder stuff than the rest of us.'. But for this kid to say that to me at that time was pretty deep and dark. Lem Billings and John F Kennedy were practically inseparable in prep school. Something quickens in the column of her neck. "Oh, yes?" '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. Quirk alleged thatBilling and Kennedys relationship included oral sex with JFK always being on the receiving end. He was also plagued by ill health. JAMIE RICHARDSON: John F. Kennedy had no shortage of people who considered themselves friends of the 35th president. Read More. I don't know whether she wrote to Bobby, but she certainly didn't telephone or visit him. Irked, Joe Kennedy would sneeringly ask his wife, Rose, 'Do we have to have that queer around all summer? He had his own room in the White House and advised Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in her redecoration of 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. However, the relationship between Queer question. After Kennedy was elected president, Billings was a constant presence at the White House, and advisers were concerned about possible political repercussions. Her main concern was that he be on time for dinner. And I think Billings had a way of editing things - painting the picture of Bobby's performance smoother than it really was. Girls in these days are instructed to shoot out a clean, firm thread of inquiry at all times. Jack and Lem explores the enduring friendship between John F. Kennedy and Kirk Lemoyne Billings (aka "Lem"). 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. All in all, there's a certain relief in being able to retreat into the Crestline's back seat. reason I never got married.". Lem Billings (left) became a surrogate father to Bobby Kennedy Jr. (right). He may have been the the Navy, as described more fully in the separate Wikipedia biography of John He had an older sister, Ruth (Speer) Steele, older brother, Eugene "Bud" Speer, and younger half-brother Lawrence "Larry" Payant. 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. Lem married Rolla Jean Auer on September 17, 1950. Ethel Kennedy "booted" Bobby, Jr. out of the Hickory Hill home at age 14 and basically fed him to Billings. Kennedy was unwell through much of his childhood, beginning with a near-deadly case of scarlet . 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 . ', Hejduk also immediately perceived that the relationship between Bobby and Billings 'was probably one of those unrequited-love kind of things.'. However, the sixth-season premiere showed in fact that the heroin fiasco was . 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. But it was the only boarding school that Lem Billings could find that would admit him. He was born to Otis and Anna Speer on July 14, 1928, in Glasgow, Montana. Monroe and JFK were first introduced in 1954 by Peter Lawford, JFK's brother-in-law. The funeral will be held in Pittsburgh. "The result is this book, which looks at Jackie before she was Jackie the Jackie that we all think we know. Billings made his desire known while the two were still at school by writing Kennedy a love note on a piece of toilet paper. As Fanning recalled years later, 'The room was filthy and Bobby let the bird, which perched on the bust of his father, s**t all over the place, including all down that bust of his dead father. 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 just reeks of arrogance, but I did not experience Bobby as arrogant.'. A planetarium-like darkness, with the two of them swimming like moons. 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. Billings, was a prep school roommate and then 2. In Lem, Jack found a confidant and caretaker; Jack was frequently ill while at Choate, but Lem kept his spirits high . And Bobby was sort of always unkempt.'. 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 . And it was pretty common, of course in those days and that culture, for men not to be that way.". Lem also worked for JFK in the West Virginia and Wisconsin primaries According to biographer James Spada, When Kennedy tired of her, he passed her off to his brother in 1962. 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. Jack's best friend was Lem, and he would want to remind everyone of that today. As for Kennedy himself, Vidal asserted that the president "felt quite comfortable in the company of homosexuals as long as they were smart enough to hold his interest.". Billings Funeral Home, in Elkhart IN, offers personalized and compassionate service for everyone who walks through our doors. Lem was the second person Jack's sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, called after reaching her sister, Pat Lawford. defeated. She contacted the headmaster on several occasions to ask about the boy's well- being. The book is set in 1981, in New York City, where Jackie has settled after becoming the Widow Onassis and joining the working world. He possessed a 'high, screechy laugh' and a 'high, nasal whine of a voice' that, according to Quirk, 'instantly tabbed him as gay.'. 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. We're due at Bobby and Ethel's that night, but Jack instead cuts across Chain Bridge. 'We couched it in terms of what was best for Bobby. Billings was buried near his mother's grave in his hometown of Pittsburgh. 'People think I'm a joke,' he once acknowledged. A wider smile than I would have guessed possible. Kirk Lemoyne (Lem) Billings. Of the Kennedys, only Bobby's uncle Ted had shown up at Millbrook to see how his nephew was doing. A telephone conversation between President Kennedy and Lem Billings. Bobby, do you have clothes?" In school JFK and Lem were close. ", "I thought, 'What a great cat-bird seat he would've had, and wouldn't he make a great narrator?' . Lem Billings passed away from a heart attack at 65 in 1981. quoted from the book: "Jack made a big difference in my life," John F. Kennedy and Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billingsmet in 1933 as sophomoresat Choate Rosemary Hall, a Connecticut prep school where they worked on their class yearbook together. He was also a trustee of the Kennedy Library at Harvard. 'He was coming up and he was taking Bobby out to dinner and things like that. With "Jack and Lem," Pitts has indeed turned over a new stone. Quirk immediately pegged Billings as gay, noting his "high, screechy laugh," and "high nasal whine of a voice.". His name was Lem Billings. I understand he's not worth it.". All I can make out through my encrusted specs are a row of white pilasters and a front portico. And now that we've crossed into Virginia, the only thing left to figure out is where she might live. Irelands most popular baby names of 2022 - by county! 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. 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. "Because he was so handsome, and he was so charming, and he just had that way about him.". Joseph Kennedy Sr. called him "my second son," and he . '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. Michelotti-Sawyers Mortuary and Crematory is a locally and independently owned and operated full service funeral home and crematory. Only a very liberal school [like Pomfret] that needed money would take him.'. He had an older sister, Ruth (Speer) Steele, older brother, Eugene "Bud" Speer, and younger half-brother Lawrence "Larry" Payant. '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. 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. The point is there's no way of knowing what they're saying, and Jack sometimes gets cross if I talk too much with his dates (unless I'm doing something useful like showing them the door). But that's the kind of kid he was, deep into bad stuff.'. We learn more curious facts when we read that Lem Billings became a 'surrogate father' to Bobby Kennedy, Jr., after the alleged death of RFK. But, the Skakels had previously been homophobic to Billings. I'd known him then for a few months and knew he'd do anything. 'There was no gnashing of teeth and sobbing in the context of his leaving. 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. President Kennedy was a completely liberated man when he was with Lem.'. 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,. In his will he left his Manhattan home to Bobby. ', 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. , In office January 20, 1961 November 22, 1963. I know he had all that baggage with his father, but being in that pit that was the kind of thing he would do. This page is created to honor his memory and is dedicated to his family and friends. Billings had even begun calling Bobby 'Jack' by mistake, and Billings had instructed one of Bobby's close cousins, Christopher Kennedy Lawford, also a drug abuser at the time, to be to Bobby what RFK had been to JFK. 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. Trio arrested during crackdown fall foul of national security law. The Cold War was still raging, and there was fear Russian agents might use the friendship against Kennedy. The president was famously believed to have affairs during their marriage. 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.