By horse and carriage, he had to make many trips to the large Shenandoah Garage near Damen Avenue. Many of the bodies, if not all, were brought to the garage and held there for pickup. There were so many bodies at the funeral chapel that there was not enough room for them. Otto took down the large roll-a-way doors from the room where the carriages were washed and used them to hold the bodies. He set the doors on the ground with a box under one end so each body would have its head higher than its feet.

Jerry Muchna, Otto’s son, recalled, “My dad did all of the embalming and my mother did the makeup and hair dressing. They worked continuously and were just worn out. It was day and night work for several days. I remember that the poor horses were also worn out because of the many trips to the cemeteries. It took many trips to the Shenandoah Garage to pickup the bodies, and then all the trips to the cemeteries which were up to 14 miles away. My dad would return from the cemetery, embalm and prepare another body for burial. It was just too much work for both my dad and my mother but they did their best.”

Otto and Mary Muchna’s stories were brought to life in Jay Bonansinga’s 2005 book, The Sinking of the Eastland: America’s Forgotten Tragedy as well as Andrew White’s Eastland: A New Musical, presented at Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre in 2012 and at Renegade Theater in Duluth, Minnesota, in 2015.