Jim Cornelison
Live the Salute.
In 2019, a Marine named Ed Schrank asked me to teach him to sing the National Anthem.
He’d spent fifteen years in the Corps. He’d lost half his face to cancer. He’d already survived five times, and he had one dream left: to sing the anthem at a Major League Baseball game.
He died on November 17, 2024, after his eighth fight. This is what he taught me.
His flag is still there.
That summer, Ed sang the anthem at three Major League ballparks: the Giants, the Cubs, and the White Sox. He had done what he’d promised himself in the hospital years earlier, when doctors thought he was dying.
He would fight cancer three more times. In November 2024, after his eighth fight, Ed died.
The words on his stone are his own.
Sing it loud.
When Ed entered hospice in 2024, he called me with one more request. He wanted me to sing the National Anthem at his funeral.
I told him I don’t sing at funerals. He told me he didn’t care.
So I sang. With everything I had, because Ed had earned every note.
What he taught me, more than anything, is that once you let go of fear, you fill the space with happiness. His flag is still there. Every time I stand for the anthem now, I’m thinking of him.
This is what Live the Salute means to me.