Though physicians examining Roosevelt after his polio attack specifically noted that he had not been rendered impotent by the disease, his son Jimmy believed that “it would have been difficult for him to function sexually after he became crippled,” since the sensation in his lower body was “extremely limited.” Further, Jimmy argued, he would have been “too embarrassed” to have sex, too vulnerable to humiliation. Elliott disagreed with his brother’s assessment. In a co-authored book written long after both his parents were dead, he alleged that Missy and his father had been lovers.
