John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings. JFK Library and Museum

President John F. Kennedy might have had an intimate relationship with a gay buddy from his prep college days, claims bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer, that has written two publications concerning the Kennedys.

Although 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 former prep college buddy Lem Billings may have already been an intimate one.

Kennedy and Billings met in 1933 inside 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 drawn to the handsome young Kennedy.

Oppenheimer writes into the constant Mail that their relationship that is intimate would from their college years to the day's Kennedy’s assassination. He states Billings also had his very own space within the White House, much to Jackie Kennedy’s chagrin.

Billings made their desire understood although the two were still at school by composing Kennedy a love note on a bit of rest room paper.

A startled Kennedy reacted to your note by saying, “Please do not compose in my experience on toilet tissue any longer. I am maybe maybe not that type or sort of child. ”

Nevertheless, Kennedy's emotions quickly changed and then he became more amenable to their buddy's improvements, based on Lawrence J. Quirk, writer of The Kennedys in Hollywood, whom first came across Billings when you look at the mid-Forties when 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 ended up being intimate, to a spot, and “included oral intercourse, with Jack constantly regarding the obtaining end. ”

Their arrangement, Quirk states, “enabled Jack to sustain his self-delusion that right men whom received oral sex off their men had been actually only straights to locate intimate launch, ” and, “Jack was in love with Lem being in love him the perfect follower adorer. With him and considered”

Although Joe Kennedy, the household patriarch, ended up being apparently dubious of Billings’ close relationship along with his son, the Kennedy family members welcomed Billings to their exclusive household group.

Based on 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 were a liberal family members and one which tolerated plenty of heterosexual promiscuity too. ”

In her memoir, instances to keep in mind, posted eleven years after JFK’s assassination camdolls website 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 actually been element of 'our household' since that very first time he turned up at the house 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 had been a presence that is constant the White House, and advisers where concerned with feasible governmental repercussions. There clearly was a fear Russian agents could make use of the relationship to blackmail Kennedy, claims Oppenheimer.

Jackie ended up being apparently upset that her spouse spent so time that is much Billings and therefore he usually spent the evening in the White House.

After Kennedy’s assassination, Billings was devastated. Biographer Sally Bedell Smith, described Billings as “probably the saddest for the Kennedy widows. ”

After the assassination of RFK in 1968, Billings transferred his intimate feeling to Kennedy’s nephew, Bobby Kennedy Jr, to whom Billings would become a “fawning surrogate dad and other drug individual. ”

“Young Bobby replaced Jack in Lem's heart of hearts, ” one source told Oppenheimer, that is the writer regarding the guide Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Additionally The black Side regarding the Dream.

David Pitts, the author of Jack and Lem: The Untold tale 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 their home with him and there was indeed rumors due to that. I've no proof some way, but i might discount any sexual intercourse. ”

Lem Billings died in their rest of a obvious coronary attack on might 28, 1981 in the age of 65.

Bobby Kennedy Jr. Offered the eulogy.

“I’m certain he's currently arranging 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 was Jack's birthday. Jack's closest friend had been Lem, in which he would like to remind everybody else of this 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