On A Loyal Companion

People say you’re fortunate if you have one or two people in your life outside of your family in whom you can completely confide and on whom you can completely count. Lem had such a friend in John. The pair met at a prestigious prep school, Choate, in the 1930s. Both boys were from wealthy families in the Northeast, and both came from families where the father was largely absent and distant. So, in many ways, it was quite natural that the two would become best chums.

They roomed together at the boarding school for several years. In fact, Lem, a year older than John, thought so much of the friendship that he agreed to re-do his senior year so he could graduate with his best friend. And John was forever grateful for Lem’s sacrifice. They formed a secret society, called the Muckers, whose aim was to play pranks on the staff and on the school at large. Each young man needed someone in his corner, someone who would have the other’s back unreservedly. And they were indeed that for each other. Then, in 1937, the pair spent that summer traveling around Europe. The bond between the two grew even tighter.

Now, at this point, we have to say what you might be thinking. Yes, there was a sexual attraction in play here, but it turned out that only Lem had romantic feelings. John didn’t, but that didn’t stop John from loving Lem as his best friend and closest confidant. John knew that Lem was gay. While Lem would have preferred something more that best friends, he was content that John was in his life in that role if nothing else.

And that’s the way the relationship remained. Lem was in John’s wedding. John’s wife would later joke that her marriage to John came with a built-in houseguest because Lem was always staying over. He often spent holidays at John’s family’s house, and, to keep people from gossiping, he even took John’s sisters to social events. But, society being what it was then, Lem had to remain in the closet.

Both young men served in World War 2 with distinction. They remained close after the war. In fact, they roomed together for a while as bachelors as John began his career and Lem put off attending Harvard Business School for a graduate degree. As John’s career took off, Lem became his closest advisor and confidant, a role he’d had since the two were at Choate together. He was at John’s side when John faced the toughest decisions of his life. John offered Lem positions that would let them work together, but Lem turned them down. He felt strongly that working together would somehow change the nature of the relationship, and he didn’t want to run that risk. John appreciated that sense of love and loyalty in his friend for the rest of his life.

So, yes; having a close companion and a loved and trusted best friend is a rare and precious thing. But the fact that he was gay is a major reason you don’t know the important role Lem Billings played in the life of John F. Kennedy.

On an Inspection

The 1950s and early ’60 were a time in white middle class America when gender roles and rules of social decorum were fairly strictly defined and generally observed. Women wore hats and gloves to church and, often, even to the store; men wore suits to dinner and even to the movie theater. The reason some people watch reruns of the old TV show Leave It to Beaver today is to see what was the reality for many families at the time–a nostalgia for a period when the men worked while the woman stayed home and raised the kids, and people lived in nice suburban comfort. All of that changed, of course, in the 1960s beginning with such things as John Kennedy not wearing hats and the emergence of the counter culture that followed in the wake of the Civil Rights and Vietnam War protests. Allow all of that to serve as the societal background to the meeting of two women when one was moving into a new home in 1961.

Now, the two had met before because their husbands were in the same business although there were a generation apart. The occasion was that the younger woman’s husband had recently received a promotion, and an upgrade in the family’s living situation was in order. The older woman, the one who had been living in the home, was not happy that this younger woman and her husband and children were moving in to the place she and her husband had called home for almost a decade. But, social custom demanded that she take the younger woman on a tour of the house, an inspection of sorts. And it was no secret that the older woman disliked this younger woman.

To be fair, the older woman was, to be somewhat impolitic, frumpy. Not that she didn’t follow the social norms, because she did. In fact, she was, in many ways, the quintessential representative of that stolid, solid, middle class that represented much of white America. But the contrast between her and the younger woman was so, well, drastic. This younger woman followed the latest fashion. She had model good looks. And she spoke French! You could hardly find a greater difference between two women despite the fact that they both conformed to the social norms in every other way. And that included the prerequisite inspection of the home.

The younger woman, only two weeks away from a cesarean section and the birth of a boy, was still in a great amount of pain and discomfort. She had asked that the home inspection be postponed because of this, but the older woman insisted. Whether this was out of spite or out of jealousy or even simple lack of empathy is unknown. And when the younger woman came to the house, the older woman waited for her in a hallway. Rather than come towards the woman who was in obvious discomfort, the older woman simply stuck out her hand in unsmiling welcome and forced the younger woman to walk to her to shake it. She then led the hurting younger woman through the entire house, walking quickly, almost intentionally it seemed, so that, by the end of the one hour tour, the younger woman was almost in tears of pain.

As I said, the older woman really didn’t wish to leave the house. It wasn’t her choice, of course. Her husband was retiring, you see, and it was time for them to downsize. And perhaps that was part of the jealousy the older woman felt. Her husband’s useful work life was largely over, while this younger woman’s husband’s period of fruitful work was only then coming into season. We do know, for a fact, that the older one referred to the lovely and elegant younger woman snidely as “That College Girl.”

But we don’t know, for sure, why Mamie Eisenhower disliked Jackie Kennedy so much.

On Visiting An Old Home

Take it from someone who has rented far more than he has owned: Moving often from place to place stinks. And temporary homes can be difficult places to create family memories. Before us we have the case of a small family of four who lived in a house for three years before having to move out. The husband, wife, and two small kids moved into a place south of Baltimore in the early 1960s because of the husband’s work. While there, the wife had lost an infant son, so there was that trauma the family went through while living there. On the other hand, the family also experienced some joy there, as families do, on holidays and birthdays and the like.

Then, in the third year there, the husband passed away suddenly. The young widow had to move, and she decided that she and the two children under the age of 6 should move in with family up north. The owners of the property were sympathetic to the tragic circumstances; they allowed the woman and her kids to take all the time they needed to pack up. However, knowing that she really couldn’t stay there (and another family waited for them to vacate), the woman managed to organize a move from the house within two weeks after her husband’s funeral.

Years passed.

As the children grew, the woman often thought of that house that had held such mixed memories for her. On the other hand, she also recognized that the place was the only house in which her kids shared any memories of their dad. So, she made arrangements to take her children, by then aged 13 and 10, back to the old house for a visit. She wrote to the then-occupants of the residence and asked if she and and the children could drop by sometime for a quick visit.

She received a warm letter in return welcoming the family back. And so it was, in 1971, that the widow–who had since remarried–and her two children went back to the house where they had lived almost 8 years earlier. Those occupants of the house welcomed them warmly because they understood that, even if the house was a temporary home, it was still home because of the memories made there, memories both good and bad.

The two children were taken in hand by the current occupant’s two older daughters. The four kids played with the family’s dogs while the adults visited. The widow quietly but sincerely thanked the occupants for being so accommodating in allowing them to intrude. The short visit concluded with good wishes, and when the family returned home, both children wrote letters of thanks back to the host family, telling them how wonderful it was to be in the only place where they remembered their dad.

The woman also penned a heart-felt thank you note.

“You can’t imagine the wonderful gift the your family gave me, and my children,” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis wrote to Pat Nixon.