Msgr. Béla Varga was Chairman of the Amnesty for Political Prisoners in Hungary Action Committee in New York. He was a Papal Prelate and former President of the Hungarian Parliament from 1946-1947.
Elisabeth Vester was Secretary of Der Christ in der Welt and writes from Vienna, Austria.
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).
Sr. Inez of the Blessed Trinity was a Carmelite nun of Bramshott in England.
Fr. Innocent seems to have been a Trappist monk of Gethsemani. He writes the first letter on a trip to the Benedictine monastery of St-Benoît-du-Lac in Quebec, Canada, which he describes as possessing the idea of "hermits in community".
Marianne Jahn writes from New York.
Dom Claude Jean-Nesmy was a Benedictine monk of La Pierre-Qui-Vire Abbey in Yonne, France. He inquires about publishing some selections from Merton's writings in translation in French in the monastery's journal, «Temoignages». He is also interested in translating more of Merton's work into French.
Jorgensen compares Merton to C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.