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Sara Galbraith writes from Newry, Pennsylvania.

Barry Garfinkel was an attorney from New York with the firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom. Merton's friend John H. Slate had died in September of 1967.

Emilio Garrigues was the Spanish ambassador to Guatemala.

Hugh Garvey was a publisher and editor for Templegate and writes from Springfield, Illinois.

Ann Gates writes from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sr. Genevieve of the Eucharist was from a Carmelite monastery in Baltimore, Maryland.

Therese Giahieu writes from Montréal, Quebec, Canada.

Robert Gibney was one of Merton's closest friends from Columbia University. He filed as a conscientious objector for World War II, but was drafted. He married another of Merton's friends after the war, Nancy Flagg, who was a graduate of Smith College in Boston. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, pp. 178-179.)

Tom Giering was a former student of Berea College in Kentucky who had visited Gethsemani. At the time of writing to Merton, he lived in New York.

Br. Matthias Gill was a Trappist monk of Gethsemani Abbey. He was also a contributor to the fourth edition of «Monks Pond» (incorrectly listed as Mathias Ginn).

Dom Ignace Gillet was Abbot General of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists) from 1963-1974.

Etienne Gilson was a medieval scholar that was influential in Merton's early conversion to Catholicism while at Columbia University. Especially important to Merton was Gilson's book «The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy». Gilson was educated at the Sorbonne, taught throughout Europe and was later admitted to the Académie Française. He was instrumental in the founding of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, where he was at the time of his correspondence with Merton. (Source: «The School of Charity», p. 30.)

At the time of writing to Merton, David Glanz was an Editor of the Washington University student publication, «Freelance».

Tommy Glover was a former monk of Gethsemani Abbey, known as Br. Joshua, and one of the few African Americans at the monastery.

Banks O. Godfrey, Jr. writes from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Don Gold writes as Assistant to the Editor of «Holiday» magazine.

Fausto Gomes Romáo writes to Merton from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Denys Gorce writes from Grenade-sur-Adour, France.

Fr. Norbert Gorrissen was a Trappist monk of the monastery of Orval in southern Belgium. He inquires about contemporary problems in monasticism. (Source: «The School of Charity», p. 229.)

Gregory Griffin was the son of John Howard Griffin. He did some photographic processing for Merton. He writes from Fort Worth, Texas.

William Grimes spent time as a novice at Gethsemani Abbey under the name Br. Alcuin. He left in the autumn of 1964. Merton and Grimes continued to exchange letters in subsequent years.

Fr. Filiberto Guala was a monk of the Cistercian abbey of Frattocchi which is near Rome. Pope Paul VI, a longtime friend of Guala, commissioned him and his Abbot, Francis Decroix, to write up a "Message of Contemplatives" to present to a Synod of Bishops. Merton and others were asked to contribute and much of Merton's addition was used. (Source: «The School of Charity», p. 344.)

Foster Hailey was a «New York Times» correspondent who spent much of the 1950's on assignment in the Middle East. It seems the two men were acquainted and corresponded prior to this 1961 letter and had last been in touch in the late 1950's.

Alfred Starr Hamilton was a poet and contributor to «Monks Pond». In his biographical statement from «Monks Pond», he states that he had lived through the depression and spent a year in the army; since then, he became a socialist and lived on very little money as a poet.

Fr. Hamman was a Franciscan writing from Notre Dame des Buis in Besançon, France.

Veronica (Moni) Hammer was a daughter of Victor Hammer and writes from Vienna, Austria.

Monsignor James J. Hammon was Chancellor of the Catholic Diocese of Natchez, Mississippi.

Charles Hansel was Director of Religious Life at Union College in Barbourville, Kentucky.

Sibyl Harton was an Anglican and an author writing from England. She had visited Gethsemani and met Merton in October of 1964.

Freida "Nanny" Hauck was the mother of Elsie Hauck Holahan (later Jenkins). Elsie had moved in to the home of Merton's maternal grandparents, Samuel and "Mattie" Baldwin Jenkins, to take care of Tom and his younger brother John Paul Merton after the death of their mother Ruth Jenkins in 1921. (Elsie later married Merton's uncle, Harold Jenkins). Freida Hauck lived in Great Neck, New York.

Rosemary Haughton was a Catholic theologian and author. She was born in England, but lived in many places in Europe, and once in the United States, while young and now resides in the United States. She wrote books regarding Catholic culture, feminist spirituality, marriage and sexuality, and books for children.

The following year after writing to Merton, Terence Heelas began writing for «The Strategic Commentary». In this weekly periodical, he advocated that the United States could not win the Vietnam War; therefore, by simple military logic, should leave Vietnam. Heelas seems to have written Merton with some of his earlier ideas on strategic planning on November 27, 1964 (letter is not extant). Merton gives his opinion on such strategic arguments.

Fr. Elmer J. Henderson was a Jesuit priest and Managing Editor of the quarterly review «Thought».

Ammon Hennacy writes as the Director of the Joseph Hill House of Hospitality and St. Joseph's Refuge. The house fed the hungry and commemorated Joe Hill, who was a labor leader accused of murder (some say framed) and executed by the state of Utah in 1915. Hennacy was a pacifist and advocate for prisoners on death row. He converted to Catholicism in 1952 and shortly after served as an associate editor in New York for the «Catholic Worker» until moving to Salt Lake City and founding Joseph Hill House in 1961. (Source: Thomas, Joan. "Ammon Hennacy: A Brief Biography". Catholic Worker Home Page: 1994. ‹http://www.catholicworker.com/ah_bio.htm›, accessed: 2005/03/25.)

Dagmar Henne was with the German Department of the publisher Agence Hoffman and writes from Munich, Germany.

Fr. Theodore M. Hesburgh was a priest of the Congregation of the Holy Cross and served as president of Notre Dame University from 1952-1987. He served on the United States Commission on Civil Rights from 1957 to 1972 and later chaired the commission. He was also active in opposition to the Vietnam War and support of the rights of immigrants to this country. Merton's letter is not extant, but he seems to write in relation to atomic weapons and Hesburgh's position as Vatican representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, a duty performed from 1956-1970.

Geof Hewitt is a poet who, at the time of correspondence with Merton, was 24 and living in Iowa. Having begun writing as a teen, he had by 1968 founded a small specialty press, Kumquat Press. Merton publishes some of Hewitt's poems in the first issue of «Monks Pond». Hewitt would publish another of «Monks Pond»'s poets, Alfred Starr Hamilton. He now resides in Vermont and has published books of his poems and books on writing and teaching poetry. (Source: «The Road to Joy», p. 362.)

H. A. M. van der Heyden writes from Utrecht, the Netherlands on behalf of the publisher Uitgeverij Het Spectrum.

Gertrude Hindemith was the wife of Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), a modern violinist and composer. They were born and married in Germany but left after the Nazis rose to power. After spending a brief period in Switzerland, Paul took a job as professor at Yale from 1940 to 1953. In 1953, they moved to Zürich, Switzerland, where this correspondence begins (it seems they had corresponded before this time). Some letters are co-signed by Paul Hindemith.

Glenn Hinson is a Baptist professor who was teaching at Southern Seminary in Louisville at the time of writing to Merton. In the early 1960's, he brought groups of Baptist students to visit Merton at Gethsemani. Later, Dom James Fox asked that Merton stop meeting with such groups because he would require more solitude to fully live the eremitical life. Now officially in retirement, he is a visiting professor at Baptist Seminary of Kentucky in Lexington, Lexington Theological Seminary, Bellarmine University and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Merton writes to James Hoban in response to a question about the Catholic Church's position regarding modern war.

Jim Holloway came to Berea College in 1965 where he would remain as a professor before retiring in 1992. He was co-founder with Will Campbell of «Katallagete» (Greek for "be reconciled!"), a magazine sponsored by the Committee of Southern Churchmen (CSC) and to which Merton contributed. Holloway served as editor.

Edwin Honig writes as a professor in the Department of English at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Lorna Hooper was Secretary of the West Campaigners against Factory Farming / West of England Campaign against Factory Farming (WECAFF). She writes from Bristol, England.

Bob Hoyt writes as Editor of the National Catholic Reporter from Kansas City, Missouri.

Jack Huber writes from New York in thanks for Merton's comment on Huber's book «Through and Eastern Window». He was a clinical psychologist who wrote a book on Zen.

Br. Hugh was a Trappist from Gethsemani writing about a minor issue of sorting mail with Merton while he was visiting the Trappistine nuns at Redwoods Monastery in California.

H. Stuart Hughes was a scholar of the intellectual history of Europe, author, and professor at Harvard University at the time of writing to Merton. His first letter to Merton is written shortly after a failed bid for United States Senator of Massachusetts on an Independent ticket, losing to Ted Kennedy in 1962. Previously, Merton had been contacted by the group Artists and Writers for Hughes, to whom he sent a reply with some contributions of his writing. Hughes was involved in the Massachusetts Political Action for Peace, which awarded Merton their Pax Peace Prize in 1963. His 1967 telegram is written while Chair of the SANE, "A Citizens’ Organization for a Sane World", which called for worldwide nuclear disarmament. (Sources: "H. Stuart Hughes: In Memoriam." «Perspectives»: March 2000. American Historical Association website. ‹http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2000/0003/0003mem2.cfm›, Accessed: 2005/04/28.)

In 1967, one year before his death, Merton established the Merton Legacy Trust, naming Bellarmine College as the repository of his manuscripts, letters, journals, tapes, drawings, photographs, and memorabilia. Two years later, in October 1969, the College established the Thomas Merton Center, with the Collection as its focal point. (Merton first deposited a collection of papers at Bellarmine College for a Merton Room in the library in 1963.) The Center serves as a regional, national, and international resource for scholarship and inquiry on Merton and his works and also on the ideas he promoted: contemplative life, spirituality, ecumenism, East-West relations, personal and corporate inner work, peace, and social justice. The Merton Center regularly sponsors courses, lectures, retreats, seminars, Road Scholar [elderhostel], and exhibits for scholars, students, and the general public.

The Sisters of Loretto are a Catholic community of religious sisters based in Nerinx, Kentucky, near to the Abbey of Gethsemani. Thomas Merton had many close contacts among the sisters including Sr. Mary Luke Tobin.

Merton writes to the Library Club of Mount St. Paul College in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

«Ramparts» was a literary and political magazine running from 1962-1975, originally a Catholic literary quarterly, that took liberal positions on many issues of the day, such as opposing the Vietnam War.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a writer and Trappist monk at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. His writings include such classics as The Seven Storey Mountain, New Seeds of Contemplation, and Zen and the Birds of Appetite. Merton is the author of more than seventy books that include poetry, personal journals, collections of letters, social criticism, and writings on peace, justice, and ecumenism.

David Friend Aberle was a professor of anthropology at University of British Columbia whose specialty was the study of the Navajos.

John Howard Griffin was a journalist and author of a book that Merton read and found inspirational, Black Like Me, in which Griffin took medication to darken his skin and traveled throughout the racially segregated south of the late 1950's. Griffin first came to Gethsemani and met Merton in the early 1960's. Thereafter, he often visited and struck up a correspondence with Merton. He was also friends with Jacques Maritain who met with him and Merton in October of 1966 at Gethsemani. Griffin helped foster a love of photography in Merton and provided cameras, film and developing for him. Griffin was appointed Merton's official biographer, but was unable to finish his planned biography due to health troubles. Despite this, he produced a book on Merton's photography titled A Hidden Wholeness: The Visual World of Thomas Merton. Two books using materials collected while working on Merton's biography were published after Griffin's death, The Hermitage Journal: A Diary Kept While Working on the Biography of Thomas Merton and Follow the Ecstasy: Thomas Merton, the Hermitage Years 1965-1968. All letters are written from Griffin's home in Texas, unless otherwise stated. He was in Mansfield, Texas, until midway through 1966, then in Fort Worth.

John Howard Yoder was a Mennonite theologian whose writings on Christianity, ethics, politics, and opposition to war, were influential throughout the Christian world.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard was a optician by trade in Lexington, Kentucky, but was an avid photographer who would become influential in the art photography world for his haunting and surreal images. He first met Merton in January of 1967 on a trip from Lexington with poet Jonathan Williams and Guy Davenport (see Merton's journal entry from January 18, 1967). Meatyard took some photographs of Merton playing bongos, standing with a staff in a corn field, in his hermitage, in his habit but with a baseball cap, etc. In some of the last years of his life before dieing of cancer, he collaborating with another friend of Merton's, Kentucky author Wendell Berry. Meatyard's photographs are part of the collections at the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, and the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.

Fr. Francis Mahieu Acharya, a native of Belgium who later became a Cistercian monk there, came to India in 1955 and founded a monastery in 1958. He was a pioneer in a rebirth of Syriac monasticism and of blending it with Indian spiritual traditions, such as the Upanishads, and was later Acharya, or "teacher" (and abbot), of the Kurisumala Ashram. They became officially a part of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists) in 1988 and follow the liturgy of the Syro-Malankara Church (a Catholic Church in communion with Roman Catholicism).

Georges Agadjanian was a professor at Gannon College in Erie, Pennsylvania at the time of correspondence. He describes himself as a French writer preparing to write for the American audience.

Julian Allan's title suggests he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

Rita (Kenter) Anton is an author who writes to Merton from Oak Park, Illinois. She was a mutual friend of Merton's literary agent, Naomi Burton Stone.

Hildebrand Cardinal Antoniutti is writing on behalf of the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes in Rome.

Robert K. Argentieri worked for Carroll, Kelly and Murphy, Counselors at Law, from Providence, RI, at time of writing.

Fr. Gervasius Augustinius is writing from an Augustinian Monastery in Tanzania.

Living in Karachi, Pakistan, Abdul Aziz can be attributed with sparking Merton's first interest in Sufism, an interest later shared with his novices at Gethsemani. Beginning their correspondence in late 1960, Merton and Aziz would exchange books and ideas. Aziz was introduced to Merton's work through Louis Massignon, a mutual friend. An important insight from these letters is Merton's response to Aziz's request for a description of his prayer life.

J. Martin Bailey was writing as editor of the United Church Herald, the journal of the United Church of Christ.

James Thomas Baker, at the time of writing, was a graduate student in humanities at Florida State University. He was writing an interdisciplinary dissertation about Merton in literature, the arts, and religion (see "Related Information" below). Baker first came to know of Merton's writings while a student of Glenn Hinson at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.

Hans Urs von Balthasar was a Catholic theologian from Switzerland. He was the author of over 60 books, which included theology, philosophy and spirituality. He is most famous for his work entitled «Herrlichkeit». (Source: "Balthasar, Hans Urs von." Biography from Chambers Biographical Dictionary. 1997. Wilson Biographies Plus. Online. H.W. Wilson. Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY. 8 Aug. 2006. ‹http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com›.)

Dom John Eudes Bamberger stepped down as abbot of the Abbey of Our Lady of the Genesee in 2001. He came to Gethsemani in 1951 after having read «The Seven Storey Mountain» in the navy. He was sent to Washington, D.C., for studies in the psychiatric field and later helped Merton and Fr. Matthew Kelty in screening new applicants to the novitiate. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, pp. 22-23).

Shojun Bando is writing as the assistant at the Eastern Buddhist Society at Otani University in Kyoto, Japan.