‘Pick up your clothes, Jack’

Dining hall at Choate Rosemary Hall

John F. Kennedy, Choate Class of 1935, writes home on school stationery to say his "studies are going pretty hard" and mentions LeMoyne (“Lem’’) Billings '35, his roommate and lifelong closest friend. Billings was gay.

“Dear Jack: In looking over the monthly statement from Choate, I notice there is a charge of $10.80 for suit pressing for the month of March. It strikes me that this is very high and while I want you to keep looking well, I think that if you spent a little more time picking up your clothes instead of leaving them on the floor, it wouldn’t be necessary to have them pressed so often.’’

Letter in 1932 from business mogul Joseph P. Kennedy to his 14-year old son, John F. Kennedy, then at the Choate School, the exclusive boarding school in Wallingford, Conn. The institution is now called Choate Rosemary Hall, after the two schools merged, in 1971. Rosemary Hall was a girls’ school, and so the merger created a co-ed institution.

The future president could be very careless about a number of things, including in his future hyper-active sex life.