New York - Hitler's Relatives Live Quietly On Long Island

New York - Willy Hitler was born in 1911 in Liverpool, England, and in his early years sought to take advantage of his last name, in his home country, in Germany and then in America, where he moved in 1939. After World War II, though, he decided to change the name and moved from New York City out to Patchogue on Long Island. He raised four sons — Alexander, Louis, Howard and Brian — before he died in 1987 at age 76.

Howard died in a car accident in 1989. The other brothers continued low-profile jobs: Alexander as a social worker, Louis and Brian with their own landscaping business. They are regular Long Island guys, middle-aged and middle-class, two of them living together. They are also the last members of Adolf Hitler's paternal bloodline, their father, who was born William Patrick Hitler, son of Alois Hitler Jr., who was Adolf Hitler's half-brother (they shared the same father). Alois called his son Willy. The Fuehrer called Willy "my loathsome nephew."

They have moved away from the house where they grew up in Patchogue, N.Y., where their father ran a diagnostic blood lab. To their former neighbors, much about them and their upbringing seemed all-American, but some of those neighbors remember a family just a little bit apart from everyone else, speaking German at home.

Teresa Ryther, 43, who grew up on the block, said her father noticed a resemblance. "My father used to say to my mother, 'Doesn't Patty look a lot like Adolf Hitler?' " she recalled. "Once, my father told my mom, 'I just saw Patty mowing the lawn, and he turned around real quick and, my God, he looked exactly like Hitler.' "