"[3] He was five years old when his father Franklin Roosevelt contracted a paralytic illness that confined him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Conscious of her husband's disability and determined that the younger children should not miss out on the sports and physical activities that their older siblings had enjoyed, Eleanor Roosevelt learned to swim and skate.

At the end of the experience, his supervisor felt compelled to write Eleanor to say that her youngest son seemed to believe in 'the psychology of making one's way by influence and association rather than by hard work and personal achievement.'"

[5] After graduation from Harvard, his father's alma mater, John worked at Filene's Department Store in Boston until America entered World War II in 1941.

On the eve of World War II, alone among the sons, John Roosevelt announced that he would seek conscientious objector status.

James Roosevelt summarized his brother's service: John was the only one of us who had no opportunity to lead a fighting unit, yet he, too, served under fire.

He served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp in the war zone, winning the Bronze Star and promotion to lieutenant commander for his actions while his ship was being gunned.

[7]After the war, Roosevelt pursued a business career in California as the Regional Merchandising Manager for Grayson & Robertson Stores in Los Angeles.

In 1953, he became a partner in a Beverly Hills financial company but left shortly thereafter to take up residence in the family compound in Hyde Park.

However, his department store work was under the wing and direction of Walter Kirschner, a Roosevelt family friend who mentored and subsidized many of the siblings in the 1940s.

According to an authorized biography of San Francisco hotel magnate (and Democratic Party fund-raiser) Benjamin Swig, Roosevelt was also partnered with Swig and Hollywood producer Louis B. Mayer, the powerful "boss" of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in what was probably a related consortium, involving uranium investments in southern Utah.

At Bache, he managed the Teamsters Union pension funds and was a friend and vocal defender of Jimmy Hoffa until the latter's incarceration.