Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings (April 15, 1916 – May 28, 1981) was an American businessman known for his close and long-time friendship with John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy family. Billings was a prep school roommate of Kennedy, an usher at his wedding and a campaigner for his successful 1960 presidential bid. Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. called him "my second son," and he sometimes acted as escort for several of the Kennedy women. Billings served with Sargent Shriver as a trustee for the Kennedy family trusts.
Early years
Billings was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 15, 1916, the third child of Frederic Tremaine Billings (1873–1933) and Romaine LeMoyne (1882–1970). His father was a prominent physician and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. His mother was a Mayflower descendant and his great-grandfather Francis Julius LeMoyne was a prominent abolitionist linked to the underground railroad who helped establish what is today known as LeMoyne-Owen College. The Billings family were Episcopalians and Republicans.
Billings, a 16-year-old third-year student, and Kennedy, a 15-year-old second-year student, met at Choate, an elite preparatory school, in the fall of 1933. Billings as a teenager was 6' 2", weighed 175 pounds, and was the strongest member of the Choate crew. They became fast friends, drawn to each other by their mutual distaste for their strict school. While at Choate, they formed a club and called themselves "The Muckers". The Muckers would pull pranks around the school and even planned to dump horse manure in the school gym, but that fell through after the headmaster found out. Billings' first visit with the Kennedy family was for Christmas in Palm Beach in 1933; after that, he joined them for holidays, participated in family events, and was treated like a member of the family. The Depression had hurt the Billings family financially, and Lem Billings was at Choate on scholarship. Billings repeated his senior year so that he and Kennedy could graduate from Choate together in 1935.
In the summer of 1937, Billings and Kennedy took a summer trip through Europe which solidified their friendship.
In 1939, Billings graduated from Princeton where he majored in art and architecture and wrote his senior thesis on Tintoretto.
In 1941, Billings failed medical tests required by the military. In 1942, supported by a recommendation from Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., his friend's father, who called him "my second son", he won admission to the American Ambulance Field Service, where his poor eyesight was not a disqualification. He saw action in North Africa in 1942–43. In 1944, he received a commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve and served in the South Pacific until being discharged in 1946.
After working on Kennedy's successful campaign for Congress in 1946, Billings toured seven Latin American countries with Robert F. Kennedy.
Career
From 1946 to 1948, Billings attended Harvard Business School and earned an MBA. He later had several jobs, including selling Coca-Cola dispensers to drugstores and working at a General Shoe store. As Vice President at the Emerson Drug Company in Baltimore, he was responsible for inventing the 1950s fad drink Fizzies by adding a fruit flavor to disguise the sodium citrate taste. In 1958, he moved to the Manhattan advertising firm Lennen & Newell as an advertising executive.
On September 12, 1953, Billings was an usher at the wedding of Kennedy and Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. In 1956, he was an usher at the wedding of Kennedy's sister Jean to Stephen Edward Smith.
In 1960, on leave from his job, he worked on Kennedy's presidential campaign. He managed the campaign in the Third Congressional District in the Wisconsin primary and then served as general troubleshooter and coordinator of television in the West Virginia primary.
Kennedy administration
In 1961, Billings declined Kennedy's offer to appoint him the first head of the Peace Corps, director of a new agency to promote tourism, the U.S. Travel Service, or ambassador to Denmark. He later said: "I realized that I did not want to work for the president — because I felt it would change our relationship." In September 1961, he accepted an appointment to the board of trustees of the planned National Cultural Center, which later became the Kennedy Center. The next year, Kennedy named him to a board to plan America's participation in the New York World's Fair of 1964–5. He represented the President when the alumni association unveiled Kennedy's portrait at Choate in May 1963.