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Fr. Bruno Scott James (later Monsignor) was a Catholic priest from England who asked Merton's help in putting together a book of translations of «The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux». Inspired by a book by Morris West about Don Mario Borelli in the slums of Naples, James moves to Naples in the early sixties to found John Henry Newman College, which served as a residence for students at the University of Naples. After writing other books on Bernard of Clairvaux and on prayer, James wrote an autobiography entitled «Asking for Trouble» in 1962.

After the death of Thomas and John Paul Merton's mother in 1921, Elsie Hauck Holahan came into the house of Merton's maternal grandparents, the Jenkins, to help take care of the two boys. She stayed in the household to take care of Merton's grandmother, "Mattie" Baldwin Jenkins. Elsie Hauck was the widow of Captain Patrick Holahan, who had fought in the Easter Rebellion in Ireland in 1916. After both of Thomas Merton's grandparents had died, his uncle, Harold Brewster Jenkins, inherited his parents house and married Elsie Hauck in 1938. When Merton moved back to Long Island in the 1930's, he grew close to Elsie's mother, Freida "Nanny" Hauck. Nancy Hauck Boettcher informed Merton in 1964 of Nanny's poor health and sent him a telegram in 1965 informing him of her death. Merton writes with his condolescences to Elsie. (Source: «The Road to Joy», p. 57 and 71.)

Lyndon Johnson was the United States' thirty-sixth President. Merton writes to him to express concern about the Vietnam War and the threat of nuclear war with communist nations, citing "Pacem in Terris" from the Second Vatican Council. He thanks Johnson for his commitment to civil rights and the war on poverty.

Ronald Johnson was a poet and common friend of Merton's with poet Jonathan Williams. Merton sent Johnson one of his drawings and Johnson sent Merton some of his poems, including his book «The Green Man».

While visiting Redwoods Abbey in the spring of 1968, Merton met Gracie Jones. (She is of no relation to Frank Jones of Merton's correspondence.) She wrote an article for the San Francisco archdiocesan newspaper after Merton's death discussing the meaningfulness to her of sharing retreat space with Merton, his support for her as an African-American Catholic, and his offer to write a preface for a book she had planned to write, "The Negro and the Catholic Church."

Lindsay Jones writes from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She may have had class with Amiya Chakravarty, who put two other Smith students in contact with Merton, Diana Eck and Janice Wilson.

This letter is signed by five Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Kentucky. All signatures bear the hand of the letter's author, and the first name is Sr. Jude, who is the person addressed by Merton. The other sisters are Susan, Anne, Deborah and Luke in the order listed in the letter. The author of the letter explains to Merton that the sisters are experimenting with living as groups of five. Merton responds with his views on community in a monastic setting.

Elizabeth Land Kaderli was planning to publish a book containing letters she had received concerning the subject of death from prominent scientists, religious leaders, artists, musicians and authors. Merton had written her in 1962, but no there are no extant letters in the Merton Center collection. Some of the other correspondents included Mark Van Doren, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Robert Oppenheimer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Eleanor Roosevelt, Julian Huxley, Paul Tillich, J. Frank Dobie, Leonard Bernstein, C.S. Lewis, Graham Greene, and Katherine Anne Porter. Kaderli intended the book to be entitled «Letters to Carrie», which did not seem to have been published, possibly due to too many restrictions on usage permissions. Merton gives his consent.

Lila Karpf was Director of Subsidiary Rights for Farrar, Straus and Giroux and asks Merton if he is interested in allowing Buchet-Chastel rights to publish «Seasons of Celebration».

Nicholas de Belleville Katzenbach was United States Undersecretary of State under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He had previously served as Attorney General. Merton writes in plea for the civilian victims of the Vietnam War that the United States make a humanitarian gesture to provide medical relief to the civilian population in North Vietnam.

Keating was the founder of «Ramparts» magazine in 1962 and published many articles about civil rights and the Vietnam War, as well as authoring books of these issues. (Source: Reed, Christopher. "Edward Keating" [obituary], The Guardian, ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,948633,00.html›, May 3, 2003.)

Chester P. Keefe writes to ask Merton about the daily activities of a monk and the layout of Gethsemani Abbey for a senior class design project at the Rhode Island School of Design. They had decided to design a Trappist monastery.

Fred Keefe was an editor for «The New Yorker» magazine and agreed to put Merton in touch with Nat Hentoff, who wrote a piece on Lenny Bruce and Bud Powell.

Fr. J. M. Kelly was a Basilian priest and President of St. Michael's College in Toronto.

Mary Lu Kelly was project assistant to Dr. Robert F. Roeming, a French and Italian professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Julie Kernan was an editor for P. J. Kenedy and Sons in New York. Merton wrote an introduction for a book they were publishing, Raïssa Maritain's «Notes on the Our Father».

Fr. Kevin Bracken was a Trappist monk from Our Lady of Bethlehem Abbey in Portglenone, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

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.

Sr. Elaine Michael Bane was in charge of a group of six Franciscan Sisters from Allegany, New York, in "ritiro", or living a cloistered life of contemplation.

Fr. Colman Barry is writing as Editor of the «American Benedictine Review» (American Benedictine Academy) and involved with the Liturgical Press at Collegeville, Minnesota. He was later to be president of St. John's University.

At the time of writing, Robert Barton was working on a dissertation about "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and had begun as an instructor at Rutgers University.

Fr. Giulio Basetti-Sani is first writing from Via Coeli Home for Aged and Infirm Priest in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. Later, he writes from the Friary at St. Bonaventure University in New York. He had written an article of interest to Merton about Islam and Jerusalem.

A student of Sr. Marialein Lorenz in Mobile, Alabama, Gloria Sylvester Bennett was part of the class who sent Merton some ordination gifts. She sends a book by her husband, Lerone Bennett, «Confrontation: Black and White». (Source: «The Road to Joy», p. 341.)

Passionist priest, writer, and scholar, Thomas Berry shared an interest with Merton in Asian spiritual traditions and both wrote on the subject. Later describing himself as a "geologian", Fr. Berry would achieve more prominence for his writings on deep ecology and ecospirituality.

Jim Best was Director of Publications for the Fellowship of Reconciliation in New York and their magazine «Fellowship».

Dom Colomban Bissey served as Abbot of Melleray in France, the mother house of the Abbey of Gethsemani, from 1958-1986. He conducted visitations to Gethsemani as he was Gethsemani's Father Immediate.

At the time of writing, Fon W. Boardman, Jr. was Vice-President of Oxford University Press in New York.

Dr. C. W. van Boekel is writing from the Netherlands on behalf of the Dutch periodical «Ons Geestelijk Leven»

Merton remembered Nancy Hauck Boettcher when he was young and she was a baby in Long Island. After the death of Merton's mother Ruth in 1921, Nancy's grandmother, Freida "Nanny" Hauck came to help Merton's grandparents take care of Thomas and John Paul Merton. Nancy's aunt Elsie married Merton's uncle Harold Jenkins. Harold and Elsie took care of Nanny Hauck at first. According to Nancy, they "threw her out of their house", and she came to live with Walter and Ruth Hauck, Nancy's parents. The difficult situation of her parents taking care of Nanny is the subject of the first letter. At this time, Nancy was married, had a couple of children, and was unable to assist her parents with the care of Nanny. (Source: «The Road to Joy», pp. 57 and 65.)

Jan Boggs was a sophomore at Niskayuna High School in New York.

Fr. Gregory was a Benedictine at Mount Saviour Monastery near Elmira, New York. He went with Dom Aelred Wall to Abiquiu, New Mexico, to found the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.

Fr. Paul Bourne was the head censor (now called "reader") of the Cistercian Order and needed to approve of Merton's writings before he received the «Imprimi Potest», or permission to publish, from his Order and the Church. He was more considerably more friendly with Merton and more lenient of his works than other censors. Fr. Paul was at Our Lady of the Holy Ghost Abbey (now called the Monastery of the Holy Spirit) in Conyers, Georgia. (Source: «The School of Charity», p. 168.)

Fr. Charles Bowers was at the Chaplain's Residence of Lidcombe Hospital in Lidcombe, Australia at the time of writing.

Tony Boyd was a seventh-grader writing from Ashland, Kentucky.

The following memorial for Mahanambrata Brahmachari was written after his death in 1999 by Francis X. Clooney, SJ: Bankim Dasgupta was born in 1904 in Bengal (in a part of India that is now in Bangladesh). In 1925 he was initiated in the Gaudiya Vaisnava tradition, founded by Sri Caitanya in the fifteenth century, specifically into a sect (the Mahanam Sampradaya) that focused on the power of God’s name, ‘Hari, Krishna’, and at this point took his familiar name Mahanambrata Brahmachari (which might be translated, ‘the monk whose dedication is entirely to the "great name"’). (Source: Clooney, Francis X., S.J. "In Memoriam: Mahanambrata Brahmachari [25 December 1904–18 October 1999]". The Merton Annual, No. 13 [October 2000]: 123-126.)

Nancy Fly Bredenberg was a student attending Vassar College in New York. She asked Merton for some advice on a class paper she was writing.

Bishop Joseph Breitenbeck was serving as the Archdiocese of Detroit at the time of this correspondence.

Dr. Louis J. Broussard was a consulting psychologist from San Angelo, Texas at the time of writing.

Beatrice Bruteau was a friend of Daniel Walsh and had asked Walsh to invite Merton to Fordham University for a conference by the Cardinal Bea Institute of Spirituality (Merton could not go). She wrote to Merton to submit a play written by her friend, Helen De Sola, "Pandora's Box". Bruteau received a doctorate in philosophy from Fordham University, where she was one of the founders of the Teilhard Research Institute, an interdisciplinary institute dedicated to the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin. She authored many books and articles on the study of philosophy, mathematics and religion, demonstrating the integration of the disciplines and the East-West dialogue in religion. (Source: Merton and Judaism. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae Press. 2003.)

Jacqueline Bull was Head of Special Collections at the University of Kentucky's Margaret I. King Library.

Shirley Burden was a photographer from Beverly Hills, California.

Ethel Burns was writing from New York and seemed to be familiar with some of Merton's Columbia University acquaintances, including Mark Van Doren, whom she mentions seeing on a TV interview in which he spoke of Merton.

T. F. Burns was a founding director of the Tablet publishing company. He worked for, and later became chairman of Burns and Oates publishing company. Both the publisher and the publication were produced for a Catholic audience. However, Burns was not afraid to take some controversial views, such as criticizing «Humanae Vitae» after the Second Vatican Council. He writes to Merton from London. (Source: "The History of the Tablet - a summary of '1840-1990 A Commemorative History, The Tablet' by Michael Walsh" from «The Tablet» website [http://www.thetablet.co.uk/history.shtml].)

Cynthia Bush was Publicity Director for New Directions Publishing Corporation in New York.

During the time of Merton's correspondence with Paul Tillich, Grace Calí Leonard was Tillich's secretary and editorial assistant at Harvard University. Now going by her maiden name of Calí in her later roles as journalist and freelance writer, her book entitled Paul Tillich, First Hand: A Memoir of the Harvard Years was published in 1996, which includes a chapter on Merton and Tillich.

Before the Second Vatican Council was over, Dom Helder Câmara moved from being auxiliary bishop of Rio de Janeiro to archbishop of Olinda and Recife, a very poor region in the northeast of Brazil. Dubbed the "red bishop" by «Time» magazine, he was hailed by some as champion of the poor and labeled as a communist radical by detractors. A famous quote of his is, "When I feed the poor they called me a saint", he once said. "When I asked, 'Why are they poor?' they called me a communist." (Sources: «The Hidden Ground of Love» and The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research [http://www.transnational.org/forum/power/1999/09redbishop.html].)