Lem Billings - Later Years

Later Years

In 1964, Billings was named to head a ten-person committee to select a memorial to Kennedy to be placed in the Kennedy Center.

In 1965, Mrs. Kennedy invited Billings to accompany her and her children to England for the unveiling of a memorial to Kennedy at Runnymede.

He escorted Mrs. Stephen Smith, sister of the late President, to a gala ballet performance in 1966 and Mrs. Robert Kennedy to the 1971 opening of the Kennedy Center,

After the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968, Billings became depressed and started to drink. He maintained close ties to the Kennedys and their children through the rest of his life. The elder Kennedys at some point discouraged the younger Kennedys – Robert F. Kennedy Jr., David Kennedy, and Christopher Lawford – from keeping company with Billings, feeling that he drank and used recreational drugs too much. In reality, the Kennedy children were already using recreational drugs. After Robert Kennedy's death in 1968, Billings became almost a surrogate father to Bobby Jr.

Billings served for many years along with Sargent Shriver as a trustee for the Kennedy family trusts, working from an office in the Pan Am Building.

Mrs. Kennedy included Billings as a guest at a party marking the birthdays of her children Caroline (21st) and John (18th) in 1978.

In 1987, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin described how Billings structured her interviews with him. She had to submit questions in advance. Billings then prepared responses and read them aloud to her.

On May 28, 1981, a day before the 64th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's birth, Billings died in his sleep in his Manhattan apartment following a heart attack. He is buried in Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His dying wish was for the young Kennedy men to carry his coffin to its final resting place. When they arrived at the cemetery, it was already in place to be lowered. The young Kennedys took the coffin and carried it around the grave site before returning it to the burial plot.