By Karen Lundegaard, special to the Tribune

Robert Parker Muschler knew what he wanted from life and was willing to work, and sometimes wait, to achieve it.

He asked out Joan Schmiedeskamp, a secretary who worked down the hall, soon before she was entering the convent. She turned him down, tried life as a nun, but with the World War II veteran in the back of her mind, returned to her secretarial job after six months.

On their second date he asked her to marry him. Six months later, on Nov. 5, 1955, they wed.

Muschler, a longtime social worker for Freeborn County Mental Health Center, died April 12 at his home in Albert Lea from advanced stages of liver cancer. He was 83.

An Aurora, Ill. native, Muschler came to Albert Lea in 1965 to take a job as a psychiatric social worker for the Freeborn County Mental Health Center. He and a pregnant Joan arrived from St. Louis in the middle of winter with their five young children and thin coats. (A co-worker supplied real winter ones.) When Joan gave birth months later, and Robert wanted to name the boy Eric, Joan asked &8220;For Eric the Red.&8221;

&8220;No,&8221; Robert replied. &8220;Eric the Last.&8221;

Muschler worked for the county for 26 years, counseling hundreds of children and families. &8220;He was a rock for many people in this community,&8221; said Rose Olmsted, a social service supervisor at the Freeborn County Department of Human Services, who began working with Muschler in the early 1970s. On weekly trips to Owatanna, the colleagues would discuss theater and his war stories. &8220;He was like a second dad to me. He was nothing but kindness.&8221;

After his retirement in 1991, Muschler returned to a childhood hobby: racing homing pigeons. He loved to watch his pigeons return from hundred-mile-plus races. Advances in technology made it unnecessary for him to see the finish &8212; the birds were clocked electronically &8212; but Muschler almost always trekked out to his partner&8217;s Alden farm for their arrival.

&8220;It was an excitement he just never lost, since he was a kid,&8221; explained Joan.

Muschler helped found the Albert Lea Community Theatre and the now-defunct Minnesota Festival Theatre, a professional summer stock theater.

He also worked with the city as chair of the building committee for the Albert Lea Civic Theatre. While Joan starred in many of the groups&8217; productions, Muschler designed and built sets, often with his own elaborate paintings.

In an art studio he added to his home, Muschler sculpted and painted, and he took art classes well into his 70s.

&8220;When I think about what mattered to him most of all, really it was the artwork,&8221; said his son Tom Muschler, a teacher in St. Charles. &8220;I think his creativity is what motivated him, filled his life and the thing that gave him the most enjoyment.&8221;

The Albert Lea Art Center hosted a retrospective of Muschler&8217;s work last month that included sculptures, set designs and more than 30 paintings, including many of his recent watercolors. &8220;You can get some effects for nothing,&8221; he told the Tribune last month of painting with watercolor. &8220;A little water and it blooms into a sky.&8221;

Before he died, his family asked if he could live life over what he would do differently. &8220;Very few things,&8221; he said.

Survivors include his wife, Joan, of 52 years; six children, 11 grandchildren and 80 pigeons.

Karen Lundegaard, an editor at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, is married to &8220;Eric the last.&8221;