Stafford, Dorothy

In 1944 Dorothy Hope Frantz married the poet and pacifist William Stafford. After short stints in California, Kansas, and Iowa, the Staffords settled in Lake Oswego, Oregon. William Stafford secured a position as a professor of English at Lewis & Clark College, while Dorothy taught elementary school children in the Lake Oswego School District. Together the Staffords raised four children. In 1963 William Stafford won the National Book Award for his poetry collection, Traveling Through the Dark. Other honors included Poetry Consultant for the Library of Congress (1970-71), the Shelley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and an appointment as Oregon Poet Laureate in 1975 by Governor Tom McCall. Throughout her nearly fifty years of marriage, Dorothy compiled her own documentation of her husband's career, including the clippings, certificates, pamphlets, and plaques represented in this collection.