Billings had a romantic relationship with JFK's nephew, Bobby Kennedy Jr. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And The Dark Side Of The Dream Kirk LeMoyne Billings, a retired advertising executive and a friend of President John F. Kennedy, died Wednesday at his Manhattan apartment. "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. This was at the end of their final presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York in October, 2008. I mean, she doesn't look like she belongs there any more than I do, and I briefly wonder if she's a housemaid or a nanny, taking her one allotted evening out. But I think he was using heroinstudents were saying, "Mr. Merjian, he passes out at night. mutual distaste for their school and its headmaster, Seymour St. John. Ethel's alcoholic, philandering brother, George Skakel Jr., actually booted Billings in the a** at the church, knocking him into the aisle. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., David Kenne. What if Jacqueline Bouvier had chosen differently? He's gone. 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. 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. Of the Kennedys, only Bobby's uncle Ted had shown up at Millbrook to see how his nephew was doing. 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. Bobby Kennedy Jr. read the eulogy. Adapted from New York Times bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer's explosive new book, Mom who lost both sons to fentanyl blasts laughing Biden, Missing hiker buried under snow forces arm out to wave to helicopter, Pavement where disabled woman gestured at cyclist before fatal crash, Isabel Oakeshott receives 'menacing' message from Matt Hancock, Pro-Ukrainian drone lands on Russian spy planes exposing location, 'Buster is next!' President Kennedy was a completely liberated man when he was with Lem.'. He possessed a 'high, screechy laugh' and a 'high, nasal whine of a voice' that, according to Quirk, 'instantly tabbed him as gay.'. 'And there he was hunting rats out of that pile of dead sheep and cow carcasses. While he didn't have a chemistry teacher like Walter White, aka 'Heisenberg' of TV's Breaking Bad, the Camelot scion was doing everything he could to get high on whatever drugs he could get his hands on. I'm not that kind of boy.". Did OJ Simpson's Son Jason Kill Nicole Brown & Ron Goldman? RELATED VIDEO: Carly Simon Opens Up on Unlikely Friendship with Jackie Kennedy and Jackie's Thoughts on JFK, Aristotle Onassis & More, By now, of course, I'm extricating myself from the front of the car and inserting myself with no great grace into the back, and the operation is so consuming that, for a second or two, I lose all consciousness of her, and then I hear her sayin that voice, like a ghost whispering through the pipes"You must be Lem.". Lem married Rolla Jean Auer on September 17, 1950. 'He almost did things to shock you on purposeIt was a pretty dark, grim time; he was miserable and he was angry. Because Jack had no intention of ever being a faithful husband. He was also plagued by ill health. A funny photo of Senator John McCain catching himself after he nearly left the stage in the wrong direction after shaking hands with Senator Barack Obama. In the spring of 1971, Bobby was sacked once again. Wright said he never heard from Bobby's mother after the decision was made to boot her son. The Cold War was still raging, and there was fear Russian agents might use the friendship against Kennedy. 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". The family went back Knowing the kind of intimate relationship that he had with the president, advisers were concerned about political repercussions, and even blackmail. "Oh, yes?" I was told by Billings, "Nothing ever goes directly to Ethel." When Joey Brode heard the story years later, she said that what Bobby had done, if true, was 'disgusting. He has really been part of "our family" since that first time he showed up at our house as one of "Jack's surprises". 14:55 EDT 13 Oct 2015. 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. 'Bobby was Machiavellian. I have no evidence one way or another, but I would discount [any sexual activity.]. But it was the only boarding school that Lem Billings could find that would admit him. Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings (April 15, 1916 - May 28, 1981) was a close and long-time friend of President John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family. 'People think I'm a joke,' he once acknowledged. Anyone can read what you share. He was by all accounts JFK's best. 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. 'He seemed a very pleasant fellow,' said Bontecou, a classmate of Bobby's. 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. Doesn't she hear the car's tires on the gravel? 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. The Letter JFK Wrote His Secret Lover Before He Died, 5. Then, when Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, his wife Ethel Skakel had Billings act as the surrogate father to her son Bobby Jr. "He [Billings] was a witness to so much of what was going on. His name was Lem Billings. Jackie Kennedy, who liked Billings for at the Manhattan advertising firm Lennen & Newell. 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, reports Daily Mail. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Her main concern was that he be on time for dinner. 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." Only a very liberal school [like Pomfret] that needed money would take him.'. 2023 Meadowrockalpacas. . After the assassination of Robert Kennedy, a distraught Ethel turned over her son, Bobby Jr., to Billings to act as his surrogate father, sparking her brother-in-law, Terrien - RFK's roommate at the University of Virginia law school - to wonder why she would allow "Lem to have such an intimate relationship" with her troubled third born, who would go on to have a a bizarre relationship with Billings, including the taking of drugs. The business was started in 1956 by Robert G. Michelotti and John F. Sawyers. JAMIE RICHARDSON: John F. Kennedy had no shortage of people who considered themselves friends of the 35th president. A name he kept stumbling across was Lem Billings, who was identified as John Kennedy's longtime best friend. Jack Kennedy and Lem Billings met at Choate and remained friends until the Dallas gunfire that ended Kennedy's life thirty years later. 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. 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.". She never visited Bobby,' said James Hejduk, who had arrived to teach music at the same time that Bobby began his Millbrook matriculation. ", "I thought, 'What a great cat-bird seat he would've had, and wouldn't he make a great narrator?' Billings was a prep school roommate of Kennedy, an usher at his wedding and a campaigner for his successful 1960 presidential bid. ', Quirk, who acknowledged his own bisexuality, asserted that Billings 'believed that this arrangement 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. They both took drugs. He later received Blogs; Online will; Shop. 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. ', White House visitor: Billings often spent the night at the White House, which upset Jackie Kennedy. He headed the committee that oversaw the construction of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. 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. He was 65 years old. Everything involving Bobby had to go through Billings. "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. For the first time, I begin to wonder if Miss Bouvier is nervousthough it's difficult to confirm because she has a small voice and the wind seems to slap every word back down her gullet. Im not that kind of boy.. In both the book and real life, Bayard explains that Billings played a key part in the couple's romance. Quirk alleged thatBilling and Kennedys relationship included oral sex with JFK always being on the receiving end. ', But Billings was embarrassed about his effeminate mannerisms he'd remain publicly closeted for his lifetime. He noted that everywhere Jack went, Billings was sure to follow, like a puppy dog. In his will he left his Manhattan home to Bobby. "You learn a lot about how he met Jackie, about how intrigued he was by her, how intrigued he was by them," says Bayard of listening to Billing's testimony stored in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Bobby left home with $600, and traveled to California, sometimes riding the rails, and ended up in Berkeley where he bought drugs with money he panhandled. Even when Bobby was invited to weekend lunches at the Bontecou estate, it was Billings who accompanied him. See the article in its original context from. Extent: 82 digital pages. Billings reportedly told Kennedy of his romantic intentions in prep school (JFK pictured chatting with Marilyn Monroe and Robert F Kennedy). 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. Credit: JFK Presidential Library and Museum. And, for once, Billings, who serves as the story's narrator, has as big a voice as the Kennedys. Kennedy and Billings met in 1933 in their sophomore year at Choate Rosemary Hall, an exclusive Connecticut prep school. Hidden away high up on a bookshelf was a small bronze bust of his father. JFK's oldest and best friend was Kirk LeMoyne Billings, known as "Lem." The two became fast friends in prep school and, after graduation, they traveled to Europe together. reason I never got married.". 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. They remained close until Kennedy's assassinationBillings had his own room in the White House, and Joe Kennedy Sr. called him "a second son." (Which is odd considering JFK . Billings had once told Bobby that when. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy, a distraught Ethel turned over her son, Bobby Jr., to Billings to act as his surrogate father, sparking her brother-in-law, Terrien RFK's roommate at the University of Virginia law school to wonder why she would allow 'Lem to have such an intimate relationship' with her troubled third born, who would go on to have a a bizarre relationship with Billings, including the taking of drugs. The biographer Sally Bedell Smith, referred to Billings in one of her books as "probably the saddest of the Kennedy widows.". John F. Kennedy with Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. One of the leaders of the group, Rob O. It only got worse with the drugs. He's taken over."'. 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. I know he had all that baggage with his father, but being in that pit that was the kind of thing he would do. They both kept diaries documenting, in words and pictures, their adventures, mishaps, and observations along the way. 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. Read More. From 1946 to 1948, Lem attended Harvard Business School. Kirk LeMoyne Billings, a retired advertising executive and a friend of President John F. Kennedy, died Wednesday at his Manhattan apartment. I have no evidence one way or another, but I would discount [any sexual activity.]". Did the 35th US President John F Kenned have a secret gay relationship with his childhood friend Lem Billings? In Victorian