JFK and Lem Billings, His Gay Best Friend

We’ve all heard accounts of the life and death of John F. Kennedy. A library of biographies and movies has been made about his life, implanting the 35th President in our hearts for all time. There is, however, one story that has yet to be told and that is of JFK’s friendship with Lem Billings.

Billings was Jack Kennedy's best friend from childhood through his presidency. But what few knew is that Lem Billings was gay. David Pitts shares their story in Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship. Pitts makes no claim that JFK was gay. In fact, he highlights Jack's many sexual relationships with women. Pitts does, however, write that Jack knew about Billings sexuality, but stayed friends with him anyway. Lem Billings was like another Kennedy son. He even had his own room in the White House.

The letters Jack Kennedy and Lem Billings exchanged with one another holds this chronicle by David Pitts together. Billings saved over 140 letters from Jack Kennedy.

Read my review of Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship, and see a side of John F. Kennedy never seen before.

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Jack and Lem: The Untold Story of an Extraordinary Friendship

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_{Cover: © Carroll & Graf.}