Brother of Frederic Billings Jr. [spouse (s) unknown] [children unknown] Died 28 May 1981 at age 65 in New York City, New York, United States. Kennedy was unwell through much of his childhood, beginning with a near-deadly case of scarlet . whom Lem was also close to, died, Lem became exceedingly depressed and that caused Lem Billings and John F Kennedy were practically inseparable in prep school. After Jack Kennedy's election to the presidency, Billings was a constant presence and overnight guest at the White House. She saw that Lem Billings was obsessively devoted to Bobby. After it was all over, 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. The only ties he now had to his family while in school was Lem Billings. 'Sometimes I answered the phone and I would hear her wispy voice, and then I would get my husband to talk to her.'. Their very intimate relationship would last from those school days to Billings even having a room in the Kennedy White House - distressing for the first lady - to the day of Kennedy's assassination. As they became close, Billings confided that his relationship with Kennedy was, in fact, sexual, to a point. As he acknowledged some years later: 'Soon after my father's death I made a series of choices involving drugs that started me down a road from which I had to struggle to return.'. PDF Looks like JFK was Gay - mileswmathis.com 10 Lem Billings Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images Images Images Creative Editorial Video Creative Editorial FILTERS CREATIVE EDITORIAL VIDEO 10 Lem Billings Premium High Res Photos Browse 10 lem billings stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. New York City, taking lunch from his job at Lennen & Newell. /. She told him, 'I don't really care if you have a girl sleep here, but I want it to be the same person all the time because I want my kids to grow to understating that love is good with one person.'. 'Bobby wasn't just a pothead. ', 'It was that kind of talk, more bragging, but I believed him. 11:10 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. Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings was a bumbling giant, the offspring of a prominent but cash-poor Protestant family. 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. 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.". She contacted the headmaster on several occasions to ask about the boy's well- being. Inside the intimate relationship between JFK and Lem Billings (2023) Ethel Kennedy issued the requisite concerned parent statement, calling Bobby a 'fine boy, and we have always been proud of him. Bayard, the bestselling author of Courting Mr. Lincoln and The Pale Blue Eye, tells PEOPLE he was "agnostic" about the Kennedy clan until he learned about Billings' personal history. Photo / Getty Images. Jack and Lem on Apple Books 'I thought, that's the kind of s**t heavy drug users pull. Billings had actually fallen in love with Bobby as he had fallen in love with Bobby's uncle Jack when they had become close chums while working together on the Choate [their prep school] yearbook. This was at the end of their final presidential debate at Hofstra University in New York in October, 2008. Please consult your doctor before taking any action. 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. 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. Lem married Rolla Jean Auer on September 17, 1950. When a Harvard classmate asked Bobby whether such talk had any reality, whether he seriously thought he could win a presidential election and be the second Kennedy to rule the country, Bobby's response was: 'I feel that is my destiny.'. I don't know whether she wrote to Bobby, but she certainly didn't telephone or visit him. He accepted it.' 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 . . From 1946 to 1948, Lem attended Harvard Business School. However, the relationship between Billings, was a prep school roommate and then I have one additional comment, probably to be regarded as politically incorrect. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Jack and Lem's Excellent European Adventure, Summer 1937 She reportedly had a love-hate relationship with her husband's best friend. President Jimmy Carter broke royal protocol by kissing the Queen Mother on the lips during his visit in 1977. 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.". But we speed past all those destinations before steering up Old Dominion Drive. It was pretty clear he had some intravenous drug use back then, and he was the only person we knew who did.'. Then she leans toward Jack and, in a whisper stagy enough for me to hear, says, "I like your friend.". Billings maintained close ties to the Kennedys and their children Because Jack had no intention of ever being a faithful husband. JAMIE RICHARDSON: John F. Kennedy had no shortage of people who considered themselves friends of the 35th president. According to Jerry Oppenheimer, author of RFK Jr.: Robert F. Kennedy and the Dark Side of the Dream, Kennedy responded, please dont write to me on toilet paper anymore. JFK's Friendship with Lem Billings: His Best Friend Never Got Over The mother of the house, Joanne 'Joey' Brode became a virtual surrogate mother to Bobby who notes years later, 'Ethel didn't even call Bobby on his birthday. . by the end of his own lifetime he would have been described as gay. A group home in Fort Myer, maybe. He was born to Otis and Anna Speer on July 14, 1928, in Glasgow, Montana. 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. " Bayard says of Billings. Kirk LeMoyne Billings was Jack's very best friend from their time at Choate prep school in 1933 to that fateful day in Dallas 1963. Jerry Oppenheimer For Dailymail.com. Like the rest of the free world, Billings was devastated when President Kennedy was assassinated. 'Bobby was Machiavellian. He noted that everywhere Jack went, Billings was sure to follow, like a puppy dog. RFK's assassination had naturally devastated his 40-year-old wife, Ethel, who was pregnant with her eleventh child. But was reportedly upset that her husband spent so much time with him, and that he often stayed overnight at the White House. Try again later. 'I never could figure out why Ethel would let Lem have such an intimate relationship,' he once declared. their summer trip through Europe prior to World War II. He had an older sister, Ruth (Speer) Steele, older brother, Eugene "Bud" Speer, and younger half-brother Lawrence "Larry" Payant. 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. I let him down.'. "I loved the idea of Lem being the go-between for the two lovers and being broker for Jack but also a confidante for Jackie," he says. "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. Biographer Sally Bedell Smith referred to Billings as probably the saddest of the Kennedy widows., RELATED:Details About Kristen Stewarts Fiance Dylan Meyers & Their Adorably Casual Proposal. "Oh, yes?" Nature rushes forth, and the car dealers and the Hot Shoppes fall away before dogwoods and tulip trees, tatters of forsythia. 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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. President Kennedy was the first US president to meet Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace, when the Queen and Prince Philip hosted the president and first lady for dinner in 1961, according to the US Embassy and Consulates in the UK.
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