Dropdown SubMenus Based on Roles Stopped Working
just posting my solution for those who may come after.  

As I stated above, I did suspect that it was something I had or had not done to cause this issue.  Knowing for certain that the only changes made were related to stylesheet updates, which I knew could not cause this problem, and loading of new modules,  I decided I would have to uninstall them one-by-one, but before doing that, I went over the modules I installed yesterday [just a note: the reason I didn't see this issue yesterday was because the correct display had been cached] and thought about the problem and which module would most relate to that problem, so I started with jquery_update. [jquery/javascript typically used for these types of effects, hover onClick, etc.] 

I installed jquery_update yesterday.  I did change the admin display option to version 1.7, but I left the working option at 1.10.  I disabled the module, refreshed my page and the submenus did appear on hover.  

I was going to uninstall the module completely, then decided to set the working version back to 1.8 and the dropdown on hover continued to work.  

I have not had time to really look, but the original developer set up the site with an older theme and I bet there is a conflict in the version used in the theme he/she chose and the most recent version of jquery.

Hopefully this will save someone a few hours of their life.

I do still love Drupal.