His Father Suffered From Mental Illness
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His father, Dickerson Naylor Hoover, Sr. was of English and German ancestry. Later in life, he suffered from mental illness and was unable to continue his work as a government clerk. As a result, the family was left without a pension, and Hoover had to help make ends meet.
His niece later recalledto a biographer that Hoover “couldn’t tolerate” the fact that his father was sick and “he never could tolerate anything that was imperfect.” Another relative added: “I sometimes have thought that he really had a fear of becoming too personally involved with people.” William Sullivan, an FBI associate, thought Hoover “didn’t have affection for one single solitary human being.”
