JFK may have experienced experiences that are gay friend claims biographer
John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings. JFK Library and Museum
President camcrawler.com John F. Kennedy could have had an intimate relationship with a homosexual friend from their prep college days, claims bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer, who may have written two publications in regards to the Kennedys.
Even though the president that is 35th been legendarily referred to as a womanizer whom frequently cheated on their spouse, Oppenheimer alleges that JFK’s three-decades long relationship with their previous prep college buddy Lem Billings may have already been a intimate one.
Kennedy and Billings came across in 1933 inside their sophomore 12 months at Choate Rosemary Hall, a special connecticut prep college. The teens worked together on the class’s yearbook, and Billings became intimately drawn to the handsome young Kennedy.
Oppenheimer writes when you look at the frequent Mail that their relationship that is intimate would from their college years to your day’s Kennedy’s assassination. He says Billings also had his room that is own in White House, much to Jackie Kennedy’s chagrin.
Billings made their desire understood even though the two remained in school by composing Kennedy a love note on an item of rest room paper.
A startled Kennedy reacted into the note by saying, “Please do not compose in my opinion on toilet tissue any longer. I am maybe not that type or sort of child. ”
Nonetheless, Kennedy’s feelings quickly changed in which he became more amenable to their buddy’s improvements, relating to Lawrence J. Quirk, writer of The Kennedys in Hollywood, whom first met Billings when you look at the mid-Forties whenever both were volunteers in Jack Kennedy’s very first congressional campaign.
Quirk claims Billings would later confide in him that their relationship with Kennedy had been intimate, to a place, and “included dental intercourse, with Jack constantly from the obtaining end. ”
Their arrangement, Quirk claims, “enabled Jack to sustain their self-delusion that right males whom received dental intercourse off their men were actually only straights seeking intimate launch, ” and, “Jack was at love with Lem being in love him the perfect follower adorer. With him and considered”
The family patriarch, was reportedly suspicious of Billings’ close relationship with his son, the Kennedy family welcomed Billings into their exclusive family circle although Joe Kennedy.
In accordance with Billings’ biographer David Pitts, “Once JFK decided that Billings was his closest friend – like it or leave, everyone into the household sort of dropped consistent with that. The Kennedys had been a family that is liberal the one that tolerated plenty of heterosexual promiscuity too. ”
In her own memoir, occasions to consider, published eleven years after JFK’s assassination in Dallas in 1963, matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy published that Billings had “remained Jack’s lifelong 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 the house as certainly one of ‘Jack’s shocks. ’”
Lem Billings and John F. Kennedy pictured in the Kennedy family’s Palm Beach property. Credit: JFK Presidential Library and Museum
After Kennedy ended up being elected president, Billings had been a constant presence at the White home, and advisers where worried about possible governmental repercussions. There clearly was a fear agents that are russian utilize the relationship to blackmail Kennedy, states Oppenheimer.
Jackie ended up being apparently upset that her spouse invested therefore long with Billings and therefore he usually spent the evening at the White House.
After Kennedy’s assassination, Billings was devastated. Biographer Sally Bedell Smith, known Billings as “probably the saddest associated with the Kennedy widows. ”
After the assassination of RFK in 1968, Billings transferred his intimate feeling to Kennedy’s nephew, Bobby Kennedy Jr, to who Billings would turn into a “fawning surrogate dad and fellow drug individual. ”
“Young Bobby replaced Jack in Lem’s heart of hearts, ” one source told Oppenheimer, that is the writer regarding the book Robert F. Kennedy Jr. While The black Region Of The Dream.
David Pitts, the author of Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of a fantastic Friendship, told him: “Lem ended up being a man that is gay he previously a 14-year-old, good-looking kid located in his house or apartment with him and there was rumors as a result of that. We have no proof some way, but i might discount any sexual intercourse. ”
Lem Billings died in the rest of a apparent coronary attack on might 28, 1981 during the chronilogical age of 65.
Bobby Kennedy Jr. Provided the eulogy.
“I’m sure he’s currently arranging everything 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 the today. I know the Lord that is good knows paradise is Jesus and Lem and Jack and Bobby loving each other. ”
John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings. JFK Library and Museum