We might even attach the adjectives “exclusive” and “romantic” to this youthful friendship. A crew jock, he met Jack at Choate, a boys’ boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut (it is now co-ed). Born in 1916, Billings was the son of a Pittsburgh doctor. Perhaps, given his deep personal knowledge of the President and his friendship with the First Lady, he even gave directions as the photographer snapped the candid shots that would charm both the nation and historians. Lem Billings may have been present for many of these events, but if he was, he was just outside the frame of these pictures. But the point of the picture is the grief any couple would feel at the loss of a much-wanted child. A Catholic couple, the Kennedys hoped for more children: Jack had been one of nine, while Bobby and Ethel Kennedy had eleven. In a third, the President is walking on the beach with the late Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, as they grieved the death of their premature son Patrick. Another shows older daughter Caroline, who became the American Ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama, learning to ride her pony. One famous shot shows the toddler John, Jr., a man who would also die tragically young, playing peek-a-boo under the desk. Pictures of the first family are typical of Cold War domestic norms: widely distributed before and after his death, these photographs show him as a conventional, heterosexual husband and a devoted father. Billings was so much a part of the extended Kennedy clan that he was regularly included in family gatherings, and Attorney General Robert “Bobby” Kennedy named his son Michael LeMoyne Kennedy.Ī queer perspective on JFK is not readily visible in official histories that feature iconic images and stories about one of the first administrations to offer the public ongoing access to the White House’s backstage. At least one of these intimates, Kirk LeMoyne “Lem” Billings, was one of Jack’s cherished body men, and he lived part-time in the White House throughout the three years of Kennedy’s presidency. But straight men can have a gay side, and JFK’s life was filled with prominent gay men, friendships which open the door to other histories. Kennedy has become infamous for his vivid, and some might say almost compulsive, heterosexual affairs. Photo credit: Cecil Stoughton/Wikimedia Commons
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