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 Anania died Saturday in Chapel Hill of heart failure, the senator's wife, Elizabeth Edwards, said in a statement.
He served in the Navy in Korea, where he was awarded the Bronze Star, and in Vietnam. In 1958, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for piloting an aircraft that carried 13 others to safety after it had been attacked by two MiG jet fighters during a surveillance mission off North Korea.
Anania, a native of Marianna, Pa., was the first in his family to be born in the United States, Elizabeth Edwards said. He was raised in Brownsville, Pa., and attended the University of Pittsburgh. He later attended the U.S. Naval Academy, where he played football and was selected as an All-American in lacrosse, she said.
After graduating one year early in 1944, Anania served on the USS Quincy, which took President Franklin D. Roosevelt to meet British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin at the Yalta Conference.
He retired from the military after serving with NATO in Naples, Italy -- where he lived not far from the town his mother was born in
-- and moved to Chapel Hill, where he suffered a stroke in 1990.
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 Anania served as commanding officer of the NROTC at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was also an assistant lacrosse coach. A lacrosse scholarship is named in his honor.
Besides Elizabeth Edwards and the senator, survivors include his wife, Elizabeth Thweatt Anania; children Vincent Anania Jr. and Nancy Thweatt Anania; seven grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and two sisters.
Anania will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Elizabeth Edwards said.
[Associated
Press; By MIKE GLOVER]
Copyright 2008 The Associated
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