CLEVELAND, Ohio – Jerry Popiel loves music and the water, but at heart he is a storyteller.
Last year he released a version of Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” for the shipwreck’s 50th anniversary. That popular song is still heard, an eerie and respectful ballad of the 1975 Great Lakes tragedy.
Now, Popiel, a Cleveland songwriter who serves in the Coast Guard, has uncovered the story of the Marine Electric, a lesser-known shipwreck in 1983. Unlike Edmund Fitzgerald, the Marine Electric didn’t have a song written about it. But it was just as tragic – for the shipmates and a Canadian singer named Stan Rogers…