Marjorie Villiers was one of the founders, in 1946, of the Harvill Press with Manya Harari. She writes from London, England.
Sr. Joana Villon-Bras writes from the Abadia de Nossa Senhora das Graças in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Fr. Vincent was a Trappist monk writing from Notre Dame de Sept-Fons Abbey in France.
Sr. Vera Marie of Christ the High Priest (Sr. Vera Lea Virant) was a Carmelite nun from a monastery in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
James O. Wade was an editor for the MacMillan Company in New York.
Countess Waldstein writes from Munich, West Germany.
Martha J. van de Walle writes from Belgium.
Arthur Wang writes from New York and was a publisher from Hill and Wang.
Sr. Mary Albert Ward (later going by Sr. Marilyn Ward), is a Religious Sister of Mercy, who was writing from St. Joseph's Convent in Penfield, New York, at the time of correspondence with Merton.
Pamela Ward was secretary to James O. Wade, an editor at the Macmillan Company in New York.
Fr. Gregory Waring was a Cistercian monk writing from Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in Charnwood Forest, near Coalville, Leicestershire, England.
Fr. Youree Watson writes from the Jesuit House of Studies in Mobile, Alabama.
Fr. Mark Weidner was the Novice Master of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Trappist abbey in Lafayette, Oregon.
Mrs. Robert J. Werner writes from Washington, D.C.
Jan W. Weryho was a long-time cataloguer for the library of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Robert Wesselmann was a priest and Monsignor of Belleville, Illinois, who left the active ministry in 1966 to marry. That year, Wesselmann forwarded to Merton his proposal for "An Experimental Ordinariate" which would consist of priest allowed to marry and continue their ministry, but to abide by certain stipulations, including earning the income to support himself and a family, etc. He moved to Kansas City, Missouri, in 1967. He was a member of the Canon Law Society of America, serving in leadership positions from 1964-1968.
The Rev. Fr. Paul Wessinger was an Anglican priest of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Robert F. Whisler writes from Greenbelt, Maryland.
Br. Thomas Whitaker was a Benedictine monk of St. Maur's Priory in South Union, Kentucky. The monastery was unique in the United States as having been established as a racially integrated community when it was founded in 1947 on the grounds of a Shaker village.
Emmett Williams is a poet and a member of the Fluxus movement. He is most known for his concrete poetry. Born in Greenville, South Carolina, he attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. After graduation and marriage in 1949, he moved to Europe, where he lived until 1966. He was part of the Darmstadt circle of concrete poetry in Germany. After returning to the United States, he founded Something Else Press in New York. Since then, he had been poet and artist in residence at universities and museums. Besides books of his own poetry, he has been involved in editing, translating and anthologizing poetry for publication. (Source: "Emmett Williams." Contemporary Authors Online. 2005. Literature Resource Center. Thomson Gale. Bellarmine University Lib., Louisville, Kentucky. 8 Sep. 2006 ‹http://galenet.galegroup.com›.)
Janice Wilson was a faculty member from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She appreciated hearing about Amiya Chakravarty's trip to Gethsemani Abbey.
Helen Wolff was a publisher at Pantheon Books, United States publisher of Boris Pasternak's «Dr. Zhivago». Her husband, Kurt Wolff, had established publishing houses in Germany and Italy. They immigrated to the United States in 1941, establishing Pantheon Books. In 1961, they moved to Harcourt Brace in New York, establishing the "Helen and Kurt Wolff Book" imprint. Kurt Wolff died in 1963. Helen continued work at Harcourt Brace until her death in 1994.
Susan Woolfson was an editorial assistant at «Worldview», "a journal of religion and international affairs". She writes from New York.
John Joseph Cardinal Wright was Bishop of Pittsburgh at the time of writing to Merton. During their correspondence in the mid-1960's, the Second Vatican Council was in session, Wright spent much time in Rome. Born in Boston, he became the first bishop of the Worcester diocese after it split from the Springfield, Massachusetts, diocese in 1950. After serving ten years in Pittsburgh, he was elevated to cardinal in 1969 and made the Prefect of Clergy for the Roman Curia.
Born in Ningpo, China, Jingxiong (or Ching-hsiung) Wu attended law schools in the United States and Europe in the late 1920's becoming a friend of the young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., later to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. He had westernized his name, going by John. He became a wealthy lawyer and judge in Shanghai, but had a spiritual crisis in the late 1930's. During this time, he read St. Thèrése of Lisieux's «Story of a Soul». This had a profound effect on Wu. Some sources give this time as his conversion to Christianity and baptism, others say his baptism was earlier but that this was still a crucial time in his faith life. In the late 1940's, he lived in Rome with his wife Teresa and his 13 children while serving as Chinese delegate to the Vatican. As an official of President Chiang Kai-shek, he was not able to return to China after the Communist revolution. A scholar of jurisprudence, philosophy, literature, religious studies, and cultural studies, he served as dean of the College of Chinese Culture in Taiwan and a research professor at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. (Sources: [1]The Hidden Ground of Love, p. 611. Augustine, John. [2] "John C. H. Wu." Website of Christ the Eternal Tao. Accessed at Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY, 26 Sep. 2006. ‹http://www.geocities.com/johnaugus/taowu.html›. [3] Elkins, James R. "John C. H. Wu." Strangers to Us All: Lawyers and Poetry. Website of College of Law, West Virginia University. 2 Sep. 2001. Accessed at Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY, 26 Sep. 2006. ‹http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jelkins/lp-2001/wu.html›)
Odette Yagon writes from Bordeaux, France.
Fr. Callistus Yaguchi was a Trappist monk of Our Lady of the Lighthouse monastery in Kamiiso near Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan.
Jeannette Yakel writes from Green Island, New York.
In the bulk of the correspondence, Lunsford Yandell writes from Jaffrey, New Hampshire, or Scottsdale, Arizona.
Maurice Yenn was a member of the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima, a worldwide organization dedicated to spreading the message to the world of the Marian apparition of 1917 at Fatima, Portugal.
Fr. Janko Zagar was a Dominican priest, Prior of St. Albert's College in Oakland, California, and Editor of «Season», a "quarterly on contemporary human problems".
Gordon C. Zahn was a sociologist and pacifist who has written books and articles about peace studies, dissent from war cultures, Catholic dissenters in the Second World War in Germany, and other topics. From 1956-1957, he spent a year under a Fulbright grant at Julius Maximilian University in Würzburg, Germany, to study Catholic dissenters under Hitler. During this time, he discovered the Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian whose refusal to fight under Nazi rule led him to martyrdom. He writes to Merton from Chicago, where he was a professor at Loyola University. In 1964, he published his book on Jägerstätter entitled, In Solitary Witness. After a professorship at University of Massachusetts in Boston from 1967-1980, he became National Director of Pax Christi USA, part of Pax Christi International, a Catholic peace organization. (Source: «The Hidden Ground of Love», p. 648.)
At the time of writing to Merton, Robert Zmuda was an 18 year old student from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He sent some poems, one of which Merton published in «Monks Pond». After graduation from high school, he planned to go into Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA).
James Laughlin and Merton first came to known each other through Merton's former professor at Columbia University, poet Mark Van Doren. Van Doren recommended some of Merton's poems to Laughlin for his publishing house, New Directions. These poems became Merton's first published book, Thirty Poems. Laughlin, having been born into a wealthy steel-producing family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, decided he would rather enter the literary world. He attended Harvard and, during his years there, went to Europe and met Ezra Pound, who encouraged Laughlin to get into publishing. While still a student at Harvard, Laughlin began New Directions in Norfolk, Connecticut, publishing a young generation of modern poets. Through correspondence and visits to Gethsemani, Merton and Laughlin forged an intimate friendship, entrusting Laughlin with some of his most private confidences.
Merton employed Marie Charron for some of his typing after he had problems with his arm and back. He would mail her tapes or manuscripts to prepare for a standard fee.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Serge Bolshakoff received a doctorate in philosophy from Christ Church, Oxford. In his travels to churches and monasteries in promotion of Christian unity, he became acquainted with such notables as Pope John XXIII, Patriarch Athenagoras, Archbishop Temple of Canterbury, as well as the Abbot General of the Cistercians, Dom Gabriel Sortais (see "Sortais, Gabriel" and "Fox, James" files).
Patricia Burton has produced bibliographies of Thomas Merton and wrote The Book that Never Was: Thomas Merton’s Peace in the Post-Christian Era.
Thomasine ("Tommie") O'Callaghan was a close friend of Merton's through much of the 1960's. They met through a mutual friend and former professor, Daniel Walsh, whom Merton knew from a graduate course at Columbia University and O'Callaghan knew through the College of the Sacred Heart at Manhattanville, Purchase, New York. Merton became an adopted part of the O'Callaghan family in Louisville, getting to know Tommie's husband Frank and becoming "Uncle Louie" to the seven O'Callaghan children. Sometime Merton would visit the O'Callaghan's in conjunction with doctor's visits in Louisville. Tommie O'Callaghan also planned some picnics for Merton at Gethsemani. Merton chose her as a local member of the trustees of his literary estate in addition to the others from the publishing world in the northeast, Naomi Burton Stone and James Laughlin. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, pp. 340-341.)
Fr. Irenaeus Herscher was a Franciscan priest from St. Bonaventure College whom Merton knew from the library while teaching there. He is mentioned in The Seven Storey Mountain. Merton continued to request books from St. Bonaventure's library and to keep in contact with Herscher throughout his life at Gethsemani. (Source: «The Road to Joy», p. 295.)
The Very Rev. Eric Symes Abbott, 1906-1983, was an Anglican clergyman and Dean of Westminster.
Fr. M. Aelred was a Trappist Cistercian monk from Rawaseneng Monastery (also written Rawa Seneng) on the island of Java in Indonesia.
Alexandre Alexeieff writes from Paris, France regarding Boris Pasternak.
Fr. Amédée Hallier was a Trappist monk of the Abbay of Notre-Dame de Grâce in Bricquebec, Normany, France. He wrote «Un éducateur monastique», a book about St. Aelred of Rievaulx. Merton wrote an introduction which was published in the English language edition. The book was published in English as «The Monastic Tehology of Aelred of Rievaulx».
Reverend Mother Angela was abbess of the Trappist nuns at Mount St. Mary's Abbey in Wrentham, Massachusetts
At the time of writing, Bonnie Armstrong handled foreign rights for the publisher New Directions.
Johann Christoph Arnold (or John C. Arnold) is writing on behalf of the Plough Publishing House, affiliated with the Society of Brothers. The Society of Brothers is a group with Anabaptist roots and is often associated with the Hutterites and Bruderhof colonies.
Thérèse Arrés was from an area in the south of France and in the eastern Pyrenees, not far from Merton's birthplace of Prades.
Yanna Asch is writing on behalf of the School Department of the publisher Harcourt, Brace.
Waddell Austin was Managing Editor of Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards in Solana Beach, California, at the time of this correspondence.
John Bagguley and Cecil Woolf were editors of the book «Authors Take Sides on Vietnam». The book asked a range of authors to address the following questions: "Are you for, or against, the intervention of the United States in Vietnam?"; and "How, in your opinion, should the conflict in Vietnam be resolved?". Other authors in the volume included: W. H. Auden; William F. Buckley, Jr.; William S. Burroughs; Lawrence Ferlinghetti; and Allen Ginsberg. The book was modeled after «Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War», published in 1937, and compiled by Nancy Cunard. Woolf and Bagguley write to Merton from London.
Anthony L. Bannon was an editorial staff writer for «Magnificat», the newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, New York.
Sr. Mary Baptist is writing from the Incarnate Word Convent in Bellaire, Texas.
Sr. Mary Barbara is writing from St. Francis College in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
At the time of correspondence with Merton, Jacques Barzun was serving as Provost of Merton's alma mater, Columbia University. In a letter to the Merton Center in 1971, Barzun mentions that Merton was a friend and one-time student.
Fr. Jean Marie Beaurin is writing on behalf of Les Croisés de Notre Dame in Paris.
Lee Archer Belford is writing from the School of Education at New York University.
Fr. Benedict is a Trappist monk from the Abbey of Our Lady of New Melleray in Dubuque, Iowa.
Richard C. Leach was President of Argus Communications in Chicago, Illinois. He asks Merton to write a homily for Easter to be included in a series written and recorded by a number of prominent Christian names from various denominations. His sermon was later published separately as the book He Is Risen.
Fr. John Leary was a Jesuit priest and President of Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.
Paris Leary writes from New Paltz, New York. The two letters are listed as from Paris Leary and Robert Kelly, editors at Doubleday, but are signed exclusively by Paris Leary.
Juan Liscano was a poet, literary critic, essayist and editor of such literary magazines as «Zona Franca». He writes from Caracas, Venezuela.
Claire Livingston was a poet and professional violinist who taught at North Hennepin State Junior College in Osseo, Minnesota. Her husband, Ray (see "Livingston, Ray F." file), was first in contact with Merton and sent him some of Claire's poetry. Merton included a number of her poems, and their eleven year old son Ira's poems, in the fourth edition of «Monks Pond». Livingston was also on the board of editors for the literary magazine «Karamus». (Source: Monks Pond, pp. 348.)
Ray Livingston was chair of the Department of English at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Fr. Loftus served as the academic dean of Bellarmine College from 1953 until his death in 1969. He chair the committee for the establishment of a collection of Merton's papers at Bellarmine. In 1960, Merton would sometimes visit . Loftus was a fan of Merton's work and excited about establishing a connection with Bellarmine.
Kenneth A. Lohf was Assistant Librarian for Special Collections at Columbia University in New York.
Fr. Benedict Lohr was a Trappist monk of Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Virginia. He was writing as editor of «Monastic Studies» and asked if Merton would contribute a piece for an issue about the Advent-Nativity Mystery.
Sr. Lone was a Carmelite nun from Norfolk, England.
Fr. Johann Lotz was a German Jesuit priest and Catholic existentialist philosopher who was the author of a number of book and was planning to visit Merton at Gethsemani.
Dom André Louf was a Cistercian monk and author of books on contemplative prayer. He was of the abbey of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont at Mont-des-Cats in France. In 1963, he became abbot of this monastery.
This letter suggests that Sr. Lourdes is in a religious order in the Orient. Merton does not mention her order, but mentions that she has hopes of becoming a Trappistine.
Fr. Rupert A. Lutz was a United States Army chaplain and Franciscan priest who had served in Vietnam. He writes from San Francisco, California.
Diosdado Macapagal was President of the Philippines at the time of correspondence.
Robert MacGregor was writing on behalf of New Directions Publishing. He was Vice President of New Directions during much of this time. He died in 1974 at the age of 63.
Sr. Mary Maddaleva was a Poor Clare sister from Evansville, Indiana.
T. K. Mahadevan was an editor from «Gandhi Marg», a quarterly journal of Gandhian thought in New Delhi, India. He asks Merton to contribute to the journal.