Lem Billings and the Kennedys: Background information when reading Jackie & Me

Lem Billings and the Kennedys

This article relates to Jackie & Me

Jackie & Me, Louis Bayard's historical novel about the early days of courtship between John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy (née Bouvier) is narrated by JFK's real-life best friend, Lem Billings. The two men met as boys while attending prep school at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut.

Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a product of two prominent families who came to America on the Mayflower. On his mother's side, he was a descendant of John LeMoyne, abolitionist and founder of LeMoyne-Owen College, a historically Black college in Memphis, Tennessee.

Lem and John F. Kennedy became roommates and friends at Choate when the former was 17 and the latter 16. John was often ill as a young man, and Lem reportedly looked after him. He was invited to spend holiday breaks with the Kennedy family, with the result that JFK's father Joseph Kennedy Sr., called Lem "my second son" and his mother Rose once said, "He has really been part of 'our family' since the first time he showed up at our house." Lem stayed an extra year at Choate so he could graduate with John and the two attended Princeton together. Lem Billings was gay, a fact that JFK knew and that did not affect their close friendship, even when Kennedy had to be especially careful to avoid scandal because of his political career.

Lem joined the American Ambulance Field Service in 1942 and later served in the Navy. He went on to attend Harvard Business School and to be an inventor and advertising executive. In 1953, when John and Jackie married, Lem was an usher in their wedding, and he also worked on John's political campaigns. Jackie once remarked of Lem, "He has been a house guest every weekend of my married life." Lem is said to have been profoundly overcome with grief after JFK's assassination in 1963. He was also a friend of the president's brother Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968. Lem remained a presence in the lives of John's and Robert's children, though he is rumored to have developed problems with drugs and alcohol in the years following the assassinations. He died in 1981.

Jackie & Me presents a fictionalized version of the friendship between John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings, but readers might also be interested in journalist David Pitts' 2007 nonfiction book Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship.

JFK (left) and Lem Billings (right), courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This "beyond the book article" relates to Jackie & Me. It originally ran in August 2022 and has been updated for the June 2023 paperback edition. Go to magazine.