Dorothy Keeler was born in St. Louis, MO. After moving to California at the age of four, she started collecting whatever animals she could persuade her parents into keeping including alligator lizards, horned toads, show horses, frogs, turtles, cats, fish, dogs and a pet piranha named Fang.
She moved to Alaska in 1976 and sold real estate in Anchorage for 10 years, specializing in small income properties. She became interested in photography in 1981 after being part of a four-person crew that brought a 42-foot commercial fishing boat up the Inside Passage and across the Gulf to Seward.
On April 1st, 1988, she met Leo Keeler on a blind date and they have been a team ever since. When the Exxon Valdez oil spill hit, Leo announced that he had added her name to all the checking and business accounts, and she ran his fledgling photography business while he worked at Prince William Sound. The next year, they went to McNeil River on the old standby system, and Dorothy fell in love with the bears. She was especially taken with Billington, an especially fluffy, teddy bear type youngster with an enchanting personality. When the Paint River fish ladder controversy arose, Leo and Dorothy were among the first to join Friends of McNeil River to defend the bears she had naturally "adopted."
Dorothy's energy and ability to inspire, motivate and handle the details of marketing the cause of the McNeil River bears is remarkable, and as a couple Leo and Dorothy are a formidable team. Neither planned on becoming activists, but they found themselves unable to sit back and see the McNeil River bears shot because of legislation passed to appease a special interest group of unethical hunters. Happily acknowledging that Leo is the better photographer, Dorothy is proud to take credit for marketing their work to gift shops around the country. Their print line can be found in the gift shops of the Smithsonian Museum, the Santa Barbara Zoo, Grand Teton National Park, the Columbus Zoo and Zion National Park, as well as Denali National Park and a host of other gift shops in Alaska.