R. Muller, insurance agent

As Robert Muller wound down his days as an insurance agent, he found his voice.

"He enjoyed singing his whole life," Phillip Muller said yesterday of his father, who died Dec. 30 at 76 of congestive heart failure at home in Jamison, Bucks County. But in the late 1990s Mr. Muller went public by joining the Copper Penny Players in Sergeantsville, N.J.

"It begins as a class," Phillip Muller said, "and at the end of 10 weeks, they perform a revue . . . for friends and family."

But his father took the class "over and over," his son said. "It was less [that] you're learning and more something . . . you enjoy doing."

In Mr. Muller's semiretirement, his son said, "if he found something to do, he went out and did it with no sense of fear."

After painting landscapes for the last 10 years, three years ago Mr. Muller showed his work at a two-person exhibit at the Lambertville public library.

"He decided he was interested in poetry," his son said. When he had written enough, in 2006 "he was pleased with his work and self-published a book of it. . . . In his later years, he blossomed."

A Haddonfield native, Mr. Muller graduated from Haddonfield Memorial High School in 1950, and from the University of Maryland in 1954.

While in the Air Force, he served as a radar operator in northern New York state.

After reporting for a small Camden County newspaper that no longer exists, he became a copywriter for Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Co. and, for most of his four-decade career there, worked as a sales agent.

Besides his son, Mr. Muller is survived by Beth, his wife of 30 years; son Mark; stepson Aurin; daughters Lauren and Dana; and four grandchildren. His first wife, Carol, died in 2007.

A life celebration will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday at Phillips Mill, a performance space at 2619 River Rd., just north of New Hope.