"I just do them. That's all I know." That's how Joe Vitacco describes his life work. Vitacco is one of the last of Chicago's freelance embalmers. He still works out of his trunk, driving from funeral home to funeral home, performing three embalmings a day, every day of the year. While most embalmers don't make the twenty-year mark, Joe just keeps at it. Over his career of forty-one years, the bodies have piled up. Joe estimates he has embalmed 40,000 bodies. Here is the story of just one.

Producer: Matthew Ozug / Executive Producer: David Isay / Funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts. Photograph by John Brooks.

Please consider supporting the work of Sound Portraits and StoryCorps by making a donation.

This piece is available in the following audio formats [3:14 min]:
		28.8 kbps Real Audio
		56 kbps Real Audio
		ISDN Real Audio

		intro
		transcript

		Joe's tale of an "Air-Raid Embalming" (RealAudio file)

home  |  ON-AIR |  in-print |  about |  education |  support |  store

Sound Portraits Productions, 80 Hanson Place, 2nd Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Telephone (646) 723-7020 | Fax (646) 723-7026

Copyright © 2010 Sound Portraits Productions. All rights reserved.