Matt Freed, Post-Gazette Tony Vigliotti, of Brownsville, holds his parents' wedding photo from May 14, 1922. Seated in front are his parents, Margaret and Charles Vigliotti. In back are Flores and Mary Anania, grandparents of Elizabeth Edwards. Click photo for larger image.

While you're wading through the coverage of the Democratic National Convention, take a moment to ponder this: Whose ties to Western Pennsylvania go deeper, Elizabeth Edwards' or Teresa Heinz Kerry's? If you guessed Edwards, congratulations.

While Heinz Kerry is well known for her Fox Chapel farm and the philanthropic work of foundations bearing her former married name, she can't hold a pierogi to Edwards' long-standing local roots.

Edwards is scheduled to address the convention tonight. While she'll have members of her extended family with her in Boston, others scattered throughout Western Pennsylvania will be watching intently.

One will be Tony Vigliotti, 80, of Brownsville, who was startled to discover while reading a newspaper on a family vacation a few weeks ago that Edwards' maiden name was Anania -- the same surname of the cousins with whom he'd visited, played and shared Sunday dinners decades earlier in Brownsville.

The connection was clinched when he compared a newspaper photo of Elizabeth Edwards to his parents' 1922 wedding portrait. The bridesmaid in the ornate black dress and feather-trimmed hat, Mary Anania, was the cousin of Vigliotti's mother. She'd lived with her husband, Flores Anania, in Marianna, Washington County, and in Brownsville for nearly 20 years before moving in 1940 to Oakland. Among their three children -- they also had two daughters -- was a son, Vincent, now 82, the father of Elizabeth Edwards.

"When I saw [Edwards'] face in the picture, I knew. I see a strong resemblance to her grandmother's face," said Vigliotti, who attended Brownsville High School with Vincent Anania. "My family is all talking about it and I've gotten so many phone calls over it, I can't tell you."

The Ananias lived in a roomy house on Market Street in the business district of the once-bustling town. The house no longer stands, but Vigliotti has vivid memories of visiting on Sundays with his parents and inhaling the smells generated by Flores Anania's concoctions from his work as a pharmacist and chemist.

Vincent Anania was a Boy Scout and a first-string player on the Brownsville High School football and basketball teams before graduating in 1938, said classmate Robert Petriello, former sports editor of the now-defunct Brownsville Telegraph newspaper and the town's current tax collector. He still has his copy of "On the Mon," the yearbook in which he and Anania are pictured, beaming from club and sports team photos. Anania graduated in 1939 from the Kiski School, where he played football and basketball, and was a member of the glee and debating clubs.

He spent two semesters at the University of Pittsburgh before being appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. It was there that Anania, a strapping 6 feet 1 or 2 inches tall, made a name for himself. He was an All Big-East football player and earned All-American honors in lacrosse.

Anania graduated from the Naval Academy in 1945, and over the years his postings took him and his family to Japan, Italy and along the East Coast of the United States. In 1959, he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross after helping pilot a P4M-1Q Mercator reconnaissance flight back to its Japanese base after it was attacked by two North Korean MiG-17s.

His mother eventually moved in with one of his sisters in a large home on Wallingford Street in Oakland. Each year, gatherings would be held there where cousins got reacquainted with one another, and Elizabeth Edwards got her first taste of Pittsburgh. Anania's sister still lives in the area.

"We actually used to visit Pittsburgh fairly often," said Nancy Sims, 52, of Bradenton, Fla., Edwards' younger sister.

Although Sims couldn't remember many details -- she was in a hurry to pack for a flight to Boston for the convention -- she did recall winter drives to Pittsburgh and trips on the inclines.

Her father made a point of telling the children about their Pennsylvania heritage. For an athlete, sports had an important role -- specifically, the Steelers and the Pirates. "We were basically instructed that they were our teams," Sims said.

Vigliotti has never met Elizabeth Edwards, and he thinks it's been at least 20 years since he had any contact with her father's family. Vincent Anania suffered a stroke 14 years ago and is in a rehabilitative hospital in Sarasota, Fla.

Still, Vigliotti is thrilled about Elizabeth Edwards' prospects.

"I think it's great," he said, grinning. "My whole family just can't get over having a relation that may be someday in the White House. We're very proud."