John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings. JFK Library and Museum
President John F. Kennedy might have had an intimate relationship with a homosexual buddy from their prep college days, claims bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer, who’s got written two publications concerning the Kennedys.
As the president that is 35th been legendarily referred to as a womanizer whom usually cheated on their spouse, Oppenheimer alleges that JFK’s three-decades long relationship with their previous prep college friend Lem Billings may have now been a sexual one.
Kennedy and Billings came across in 1933 within their sophomore year at Choate Rosemary Hall, A connecticut prep that is exclusive college. The teens worked together on the class’s yearbook, and Billings became intimately interested in the handsome young Kennedy.
Oppenheimer writes within the regular Mail that their intimate relationship would last from their college years to your day’s Kennedy’s assassination. He states Billings also had their very own room when you look at the White House, much to Jackie Kennedy’s chagrin.
Billings made their desire understood although the two remained in school by writing Kennedy a love note on an item of wc paper.
A startled Kennedy reacted into the note by saying, “Please do not write if you ask me on rest room paper any longer. I am maybe not that type or sort of child. ”
But, Kennedy’s emotions quickly changed in which he became more amenable to his buddy’s advances, relating to Lawrence J. Quirk, writer of The Kennedys in Hollywood, whom first came across Billings into the mid-Forties whenever both had been volunteers in Jack Kennedy’s very first congressional campaign.
Quirk claims Billings would later confide in him that their relationship with Kennedy had been sexual, to a spot, and “included oral intercourse, with Jack constantly from the receiving end. ”
Their arrangement, Quirk claims, “enabled Jack to maintain their self-delusion that right males whom received dental sex off their men had been really just straights to locate intimate launch, ” and, “Jack was at love with Lem being in love with him and considered him the perfect follower adorer. ”
Although Joe Kennedy, the household patriarch, ended up being apparently dubious of Billings’ close relationship with his son, the Kennedy household welcomed Billings in their exclusive family members group.
In accordance with Billings’ biographer David Pitts, https://camsloveaholics.com/camdolls-review/ “Once JFK decided that Billings was his friend that is best – like it or leave, everyone when you look at the household sort of dropped consistent with that. The Kennedys had been a liberal household and one which tolerated lots of heterosexual promiscuity aswell. ”
In her own memoir, days to keep in mind, published eleven years after JFK’s assassination in Dallas in 1963, matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy published that Billings had “remained Jack’s lifelong good friend, confidant, sharer in old memories and brand new experiences…He has got really been element of ‘our household’ since that very first time he turned up at our home as one of ‘Jack’s shocks. ’”
Lem Billings and John F. Kennedy pictured during the Kennedy family members’s Palm Beach property. Credit: JFK Presidential Library and Museum
After Kennedy ended up being elected president, Billings was a constant existence at the White House, and advisers where worried about possible governmental repercussions. There is a fear agents that are russian make use of the relationship to blackmail Kennedy, states Oppenheimer.
Jackie was apparently upset that her spouse invested therefore time that is much Billings and therefore he frequently invested the night time in the White home.
After Kennedy’s assassination, Billings was devastated. Biographer Sally Bedell Smith, described Billings as “probably the saddest associated with Kennedy widows. ”
After the assassination of RFK in 1968, Billings transferred his romantic feeling to Kennedy’s nephew, Bobby Kennedy Jr, to whom Billings would be a “fawning surrogate dad and fellow medication individual. ”
“Young Bobby replaced Jack in Lem’s heart of hearts, ” one source told Oppenheimer, that is the writer associated with the guide Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Plus The black Side regarding the Dream.
David Pitts, the writer of Jack and Lem: The Untold tale of an exceptional Friendship, told him: “Lem was a man that is gay he previously a 14-year-old, good-looking kid located in their home with him and there have been rumors due to that. We have no evidence some way, but i might discount any sexual intercourse. ”
Lem Billings died inside the sleep of an obvious coronary attack may 28, 1981 in the chronilogical age of 65.
Bobby Kennedy Jr. Provided the eulogy.
“I’m certain he’s already organizing every thing in paradise with just the right Early American furniture, the right curtains, the right rugs, the right paintings, and everything ready for a big, big party so it will be completely ready for us.
“Yesterday ended up being Jack’s birthday celebration. Jack’s friend that is best had been Lem, in which he would like to remind everybody else of this today. I know the Lord that is good knows heaven is Jesus and Lem and Jack and Bobby loving each other. ”
John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings. JFK Library and Museum