JFK may have had experiences that are gay buddy claims biographer
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 may have written two books concerning the Kennedys.
Even though the president that is 35th been legendarily referred to as a womanizer whom usually cheated on his spouse, Oppenheimer alleges that JFK’s three-decades long relationship with their previous prep school friend Lem Billings may have now been an intimate one.
Kennedy and Billings met in 1933 within their sophomore 12 months at Choate Rosemary Hall, an exclusive connecticut prep college. The teens worked together on the class’s yearbook, and Billings became intimately interested in the handsome young Kennedy.
Oppenheimer writes when you look at the constant Mail that their intimate relationship would endure from their college years into the day’s Kennedy’s assassination. He states Billings even had his own space when you look at the White House, much to Jackie Kennedy’s chagrin.
Billings made their desire known although the two remained in school by writing Kennedy a love note on a bit of wc paper.
A startled Kennedy reacted towards the note by saying, “Please do not compose in my experience on toilet tissue any longer. I am perhaps not that type or form of child. ”
But, Kennedy’s emotions quickly changed in which he became more amenable to their friend’s improvements, based on 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 campaign that is congressional.
Quirk claims Billings would later confide in him that their relationship with Kennedy was intimate, to a spot, and “included dental intercourse, with Jack constantly from the obtaining end. ”
Their arrangement, Quirk states, “enabled Jack to sustain his self-delusion that right males who received dental intercourse off their men had been actually just straights trying to find intimate release, ” 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 friend that is best – like it or keep, everyone within the family members sort of dropped in accordance 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 had written that Billings had “remained Jack’s lifelong friend that is close confidant, sharer in old memories and new experiences…He has got really been section of ‘our household’ since that first-time he turned up at our home as certainly 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 had been elected president, Billings had been a constant existence at the White home, and advisers where concerned with feasible governmental repercussions. There is a fear Russian agents could make use of the relationship to blackmail Kennedy, claims Oppenheimer.
Jackie was reportedly upset that her spouse invested therefore enough time with Billings and therefore he frequently spent the evening during the White House.
After Kennedy’s assassination, Billings was devastated. Biographer Sally Bedell Smith, described Billings as “probably the saddest associated with the 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 become a “fawning surrogate father and other medication user. ”
“Young Bobby replaced Jack in Lem’s heart of hearts, ” one source told Oppenheimer, that is the author of this book Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Together With Dark Side regarding the Dream.
David Pitts, the writer of Jack and Lem: The Untold tale of a fantastic Friendship, told him: “Lem ended up being a man that is gay he had a 14-year-old, good-looking kid surviving in their home with him and there have been rumors due to that. I’ve no evidence live camcrush some way, but I would personally discount any sexual intercourse. ”
Lem Billings died inside the rest of an obvious coronary arrest may 28, 1981 in the chronilogical age of 65.
Bobby Kennedy Jr. Provided the eulogy.
“I’m sure he’s already arranging every thing in heaven so that it will likely be ready for all of us – with only just the right Early American furniture, just the right curtains, the best rugs, the proper paintings, and every thing prepared for a huge, big celebration.
“Yesterday had been Jack’s birthday celebration. Jack’s friend that is best had been Lem, and then he may wish to remind everybody else of the today. I know the Lord that is good knows heaven is Jesus and Lem and Jack and Bobby loving the other person. ”
John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings. JFK Library and Museum
