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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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Jim Douglass is known for his theological writing and his activism in the area of non-violent resistance to war and especially nuclear arms. He was a friend of Daniel Berrigan and Dorothy Day. He served as a theological advisor on conscientious objection and nuclear war at the Second Vatican Council. He first met Merton while a professor at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky.

Fr. William H. DuBay was author of the book, «The Human Church». DuBay found himself in fierce disagreement with Cardinal McIntyre over participation in civil rights protests. DuBay advocated Church involvement in the crusade for equal rights by marches and protests, but the Cardinal thought it was not right to be involved in this kind of public display. In 1966, he published his book, which brought to question many of the current hierarchical structures of the Church and advocated priest forming unions. In addition, it addressed the secular versus the Christian ethic. Not having approved the book through the official archdiocesan channels, he was soon forbidden to perform his priestly functions. Merton agreed with DuBay on many of his points, but did not think priests organizing a union would be as effective as informal networks to accomplish the same goals.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Irene Dunne rose to prominence as a film actress and was known as the "First Lady of Hollywood". She played starring roles alongside Carey Grant among others and was nominated for five Academy Awards, notably «Cimmarron», «The Awful Truth», and «I Remember Mama». She was known as a reserved person who did not like to give interviews. She devoted her later life to charity and served as a special delegate to the United Nations. In 1965, Bellarmine College awarded Dunne with the colleges highest honor, the Bellarmine Medal. Dunne was a Catholic, and Monsignor Horrigan, Bellarmine president, gave her some signed books by Merton. She wrote to him telling how she appreciated them. Merton responded, saying "I in my turn want to thank you for the joy I can remember, in the days when I used to go to the movies, when I used to listen to your lovely voice and enjoy your pictures."

In Monsignor John Tracy Ellis' biographical note in «The Hidden Ground of Love», William H. Shannon states that "Ellis may well be called the dean of American Catholic historians (The Hidden Ground of Love, p. 174). He was professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., while in correspondence with Merton.

Clayton Eshleman is a poet now living in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He was born in Indianapolis in 1935. In college he became interested in world poetry, and learned Spanish in order to read and translate the works of Cesar Vallejo and Pablo Neruda and to . He first wrote to Merton while in Kyoto where he was teaching English, responding to a letter of Merton's printed in «El Corno Emplumado». Later, he met Merton after having returned to Indiana as a professor at University of Indiana. He came for a visit with his wife on April 23, 1965. Eshleman was not very happy in Indiana and moved to Peru later in 1965. Some unfortunate events happened in Peru and he would only stay there a year; however, he became very socially involved after having witness the slums of Lima. He then moved to New York and founded the literary magazine «Caterpillar» in 1967. (Source: "A Brief Biography and Complete CV". Clayton Eshleman website. Accessed 2004/12/06. ‹http://www.claytoneshleman.com/bio.html›.)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was editor and publisher of City Lights Books in San Francisco that was one of the most prominent publications of the beat movement in San Francisco. He wrote poetry and plays as well as running a bookstore, City Lights, the same name as the publishing house. Merton and Ferlinghetti met in person in San Francisco on May 16, 1968. (Source: «The Courage for Truth», p. 267.)

Allan Forbes, Jr. was "a documentary filmmaker, writer, and peace activist" who "helped found Council for a Livable World with Leo Szilard, the physicist who worked with the Manhattan Project, then tried to get the US government to promise not to use the atomic bomb against Japan." He writes to Merton from Philadelphia. (Source: Marquard, Bryan. "Allan Forbes; pacifist found direction in war." Obituary from «The Boston Globe», online edition. 24 February 2006. Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY. 4 April 2008. ‹http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2006/02/24/allan_forbes_pacifist_found_direction_in_war/›.)

A life-long activist for peace, Forest first came into contact with Merton through Dorothy Day while Forest was at the Catholic Worker in New York. He was active in the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and started the Catholic Peace Fellowship (CPF), an affiliate program of FOR, to assist those trying to obtain Conscientious Objector status in 1964. In 1977, Forest assumed the duty of General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) based in the Netherlands.

Seymour "Sy" Freedgood was one of Merton's friends from Columbia University. It was through Freedgood that Merton met the Hindu monk Bramachari, whom Merton describes in «The Seven Storey Mountain». He was one of the Columbia group who had attended Merton's ordination in 1949. Sy Freedgood was later an editor at «Fortune Magazine», and Merton was in contact with his wife, Anne, at Doubleday. He did not seem to settle into a religious tradition, but constantly read and struggled with religion. He wanted to visit Gethsemani in 1964 to dialogue with D. T. Suzuki but it did not come about. In 1967, he arranged a trip to Gethsemani. Merton interpreted a car accident Freedgood had on the way to the monastery as a gloomy portent, and Freedgood would be killed in a house fire the following year. His wit and sense of humor are evident in his arrangement of a shipment of crates of all 57 varieties of Heinz products to be delivered to the monastery to the abbot's shock. He made Merton a member of the Steering Committee of NIPS, the National Institutes of Public Scolds, an organization dedicated to lampooning bureaucratic red tape and causing other mischief. (Sources: «The Road to Joy», p. 123; and The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, pp. 163-164.)