Decades before the conscientious objectors of the Vietnam War era, William Stafford took a stand.

Drafted as a Kansas University senior into service during World War II, Stafford instead packed his bags and headed to Civilian Public Service Camps, where he would spend the next four years.

“I think he was very American,” said his son, Kim Stafford, who visited KU on Monday. “He put his life on the line for freedom in a way a soldier doesn’t. He didn’t risk his life on the battlefield. He devoted his life to the concept of free expression.”

William Stafford later became one of the most prolific American poets of the 20th century, and his son now tours the country spreading his father’s message of pacifism.

William Stafford, born in 1914 in Hutchinson, received a bachelor’s degree of arts from KU in 1937. He was working on a master’s degree of arts when he was drafted in 1942.

Kim Stafford, who was at the Kansas Union for a poetry reading and book-signing session in Oread Books, said his father’s Kansas upbringing convinced him that he didn’t want to be part of any war.

“The people around him had always been pacifists,” said Kim Stafford, director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “His teachers would say, ‘Don’t let war come again.’ They’d all lost loved ones in the last war.”

So when he received his draft papers in 1942, William Stafford chose to spend four years in camps for conscientious objectors in Arkansas, Illinois and California, performing manual labor for the government. Only 12,000 of the more than 10 million men drafted worked in the camps.

“He’d say, ‘I can’t change the course my nation chooses, but I’m in charge of my own course. And I choose to not participate in more killing,'” Kim Stafford said.

Author Kim Stafford has written a book about his father, William Stafford, a Kansas University graduate and poet who was a conscientious objector during World War II. Stafford visited the KU campus Monday for a poetry reading and talk about how peace protests have changed since the 1940s.

Once while on leave from the Arkansas camp, William Stafford was almost hanged by a group of pro-war residents. Later, when he left the camp, a friend threatened to kill him for turning his back on his country.

After the war, Stafford finished his master’s degree at KU. His thesis, about his objector camp experiences, later became his novel “Down in My Heart.”

Stafford published more than 60 books during his career. He taught many years at Lewis & Clark College and served a year in 1970 as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that later became poet laureate. He died in 1993 at 79.

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Kim Stafford, 53, published “Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford,” last year. He said the book — and readings such as Monday’s at KU — helped him keep his father’s message of peace alive.

“My father did not approve of strident demonstrations,” Kim Stafford said. “His idea was to keep his head up and his voice down. He didn’t protest by evil coercion or intimidation. His way was to engage in conversation, to gain a new perspective.”