REVIEWS
The reviews to date of “Jack and Lem” have been overwhelmingly positive prompted in part by the fact that this is a new story about JFK unknown to most American journalists, let alone the public.
Publisher’s Weekly (March 17) calls “Jack and Lem” a “well-done first book.” Pitts “thoroughly documents the long, intimate association of JFK and Kirk LeMoyne ‘Lem’ Billings.” It adds: “Gore Vidal (an interviewee for the book), no friend of Lem’s, belittled him, saying, ‘He’s he guy who carries the coat…He’s the guy who runs errands…To Jack, Lem was a kind of idiot friend. But Pitts insists JFK had ‘absolute trust in Lem’ though their friendship remained an enigma to others.”
“Pitts draws a very clear line, expressed through his word choice, that Jack and Lem isn’t 300 pages of gossip and speculation, but a historical account of a friendship that turned into a life connection without crossing sexual boundaries,” says the New York Times website, About .com “Gaining insight into the real essence of Jack Kennedy’s life pre-assassination makes this account too enticing to set aside…Jack and Lem celebrates a Jack Kennedy never seen or read before…Bravo to David Pitts for finally telling the story.”
The Advocate, a national magazine, commends the author for “poring through hundreds of previously unreleased letters, telegrams and interviews. Pitts uncovers more than just camaraderie. Jack and Lem is a story of enduring love between two men – one of them the most powerful in the world.” It adds: “We know about Marilyn. We’ve read Profiles in Courage. One thing we didn’t know: John F. Kennedy’s oldest and most trusted friend was gay…For Lem, the friendship had its benefits: summers in Palm Beach with the Kennedy clan, black-tie parties with Bobby and Ethel and even his own room at the White House. And to Jack, Lem’s friendship was priceless.”
“In Jack and Lem, Pitts traces their friendship through the years and also does a commendable job chronicling the rise of homosexual culture through the decades,” notes The Dallas Voice. It adds: “When Pitts decided to write another volume about JFK, he knew he had to unearth something new…Lem was of a generation that would just miss identifying with the Stonewall Riots. Instead of having a gay epiphany, Lem became a confirmed bachelor, likely to remain so.”
John F. Kennedy’s closest pal, Lem Billings, was turned on by the future president, but never tried to take it further, a new book about their lifelong friendship reveals,” says Richard Johnson, Page Six, The New York Post. “In ‘Jack and Lem’…Larry Quirk, who was a lover of Billings, a closeted gay, tells author David Pitts: ‘There was a sexual element to his attraction to Jack. Lem loved Jack all his life beginning in the 1930s…Lem was the only person who loved Jack unconditionally, who didn’t want anything from him except to be with him, and Jack recognized that.” Johnson adds: “Kennedy even offered Billings a job in his administration, but he turned it down, perhaps fearing he’d be outed and cause JFK problems.”
“A new book by a retired Voice of America journalist traces former President John F. Kennedy’s lifelong relationship with a gay man he met while the two were attending Choate Rosemary Hall in the 1930s,” says The New Haven Register. “Author David Pitts’ book…claims that Kennedy turned down the sexual overtures from his close friend, Billings, who remained one of the president’s closest confidants until Kennedy’s death in 1963…Billings died in 1981, and in an oral history that was done for the Kennedy Library that Pitts used in writing the book (after successfully getting the Kennedy family to release the document) talked about what his friend meant to him. ‘Jack made a big difference in my life. Because of him I was never lonely. He may have been the reason I never got married.’”
In Los Angeles Magazine says. “With so many books written about John F. Kennedy and his presidency, it is hard to imagine that there is anything left to say. For a fresh angle, journalist David Pitts latched on to the lifelong friendship between the charismatic president and his gregarious – and gay – prep school chum, Kirk LeMoyne ‘Lem’ Billings, for ‘Jack and Lem.’ It adds: the book “includes some hilariously biting quotes from Gore Vidal who dismisses Billings as ‘the guy who carries the coat.’”
“My question to not only the homosexual community, but to all those journalists who since the 60s, and the dozens of historians and authors who made lots of money writing about President Kennedy and the Kennedys is, why has no one told the public this before,” asks White Crane Magazine “Can heterosexual men and women have close friendships with homosexual men without being called homosexual? Will this book be almost as important as Brokeback Mountain in getting us all to think about homosexuality?”
“Just when it seems impossible to dredge up any more secrets about the life of John F. Kennedy, journalist David Pitts has written an eye-popping book called ‘Jack and Lem,’” says Hal Gordon, Speechwriter’s Slant. He adds, “An unnamed friend of Lem’s contributed an observation to David Pitts’ book that might serve as an epitaph for this gentle, self-effacing but nonetheless remarkable man. ‘His closest friends were his heroes. To them, he gave everything he had to give.’”
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