A Conversation with Karen Caplan, daughter of Bill Keasler.

If you've ever stopped by Keasler Cottage, you've probably wondered about the name on the wall. On August 8, we sat down inside the cottage with Karen Caplan — Bill Keasler's daughter — and her husband Leigh, to talk about the man behind it, and about the family that's carried his story forward.

Bill and Karen

The Man Behind the Name

Bill served as FHA president during one of the rough stretches in the neighborhood's history, and a lot of longtime houseboaters will tell you he's a big reason the community made it through. His style wasn't flashy, but he would ask to "pick your brain" ..and actually listen.

"Bill had a very strong sense of moral justice, and he would not let go of that," Leigh said. "He just did not want bad things to happen to other people on the docks." By day he was a computer systems designer; off the clock, he was just as likely to be knee-deep in a zoning dispute while he was elbow-deep in a stalled boat engine. His 30-foot Ranger sailboat broke down on more than one family trip, and Karen still remembers them sailing it back to the dock without a motor more than once.

In 1983, the Keasler family was evicted from their home on Fairview Ave E — Bill fought it and lost, though the experience helped fuel his later advocacy work so other families wouldn't face the same thing. When they eventually moved to a new dock, they skipped the movers entirely: two floating homes were pushed together, side by side, so the family could just walk their belongings from one to the other. "U-Haul could never," Leigh joked.

And then there was the willow tree — a thirty-year standoff between Bill and the local beaver population, who kept gnawing it down. He built a cage around that tree, but they kept coming back. (There is a willow today in the same place location - so we think the fight continues)

None of this would have worked without his wife, Caryl, who taught for decades, including special education at Bellevue High School, and later substitute teaching in Seattle Public Schools after retiring. Her willingness to hold things down at home is a big part of why Bill was free to spend so many evenings on the front lines for the neighborhood. (For more information on Bill's life, read this ECC Newsletter page 8 from our FHA archives)

Karen's Own Story

Here's the part that tends to surprise people: Karen didn't just inherit her dad's sense of neighborhood duty — she took his technical mind somewhere entirely her own.

She and Leigh now live on Beacon Hill with their 10-year-old son, Holden William, whose middle name honors his grandfather. Karen works as a web developer for Elevate Outdoor Collective (formerly K2 Sports), and Leigh is a software engineer too — a fairly direct echo of Bill's own career, even though Karen's route there wasn't a straight line. She started with a psychology degree and was most of the way through a master's in family therapy before switching paths. Leigh, for his part, talked her into snowboarding — "if you ever want to hang out with me in the wintertime, I'm gonna be up in the mountain" — and she now works for a ski and snowboard company.

Then there's the part of their life that doesn't come up on the dock much: under the names Iris and Quadrant, Karen and Leigh are the internationally touring drum & bass duo Quadrant & Iris. Karen got hooked on electronic music at 13, after hearing Faithless's "Insomnia" on Seattle's C89.5. Years later, their track "Anthropocene" caught the ear of UK drum & bass legend Goldie, who signed it to his label, Metalheadz. They've since released music on several well-known labels in the genre and played shows in London, Bristol, and Italy, all while juggling full-time engineering jobs and raising Holden. Studio time happens on weekends, often over remote sessions when touring keeps them apart.

What We're Still Piecing Together

The FHA's historical archive is a work in progress, and conversations like this one help fill gaps that the old newsletters and photos don't cover — the small, human details that don't usually make it into official records.

If anyone in the neighborhood has stories, photos, or memories of Bill Keasler to share, Karen and Leigh — and the FHA — would love to hear from you.

🥧 Sidebar: The Pies Are Back

Bill's other legacy around the docks? Pie. After his mother passed away, he taught himself to recreate her recipes and became something of a neighborhood institution — the pie guy of Eastlake. He even built a small website to document his experiments, which was lost to the internet for years.

Karen recently tracked it down. If you'd like to try your hand at Bill's pies, the recipes are now up and available here: LINK