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Dom Damasus Winzen was a Benedictine monk of Maria Laach Abbey in Germany until the rise of Hitler. He moved to the United States and first writes to Merton while at Regina Laudis Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut, in 1950. In 1951, he founded Mount Saviour Monastery in Elmira, New York. The monastery was founded on principles of simplicity and equality without traditional divisions between choir monks and lay brothers, all sharing in the raising of sheep. (Source: «The School of Charity», p. 18.)

Dom Jacques Winandy was born in Liege, Belgium, in the early 20th century and became a Benedictine monk Clervaux Abbey in Luxemburg. This was a compromise for him. His father wanted him to enter a Benedictine abbey closer to home rather than follow his dreams of becoming a Carthusian. Carthusians are a monastic order living in community but spending most of the day, besides Mass and two of offices of prayer, in solitude in one's cell. During World War II, the monks of Clervaux lived in exile in religious houses in Belgium. Winandy was excepted as a Carthusian during this time; however, he was elected as abbot of Clervaux immediately after the war, a role he reluctantly accepted. He served as abbot until 1957. He spent time as a hermit before, after a year in Rome, being sent to the Benedictine abbey in Martinique. There he met Br. (now Fr.) Lionel Pare. Pare shared Winandy's interest in the eremitical life. They obtained permission to start of group of hermits, living individually but under the direction of an elder in 1964. They found an amenable bishop, Bishop Remi De Roo and the space for solitude on the Tsolum River in British Columbia, Canada, near Merville. Winandy remained in a hermitage in British Columbia until 1972, when he returned to a hermitage in Belgium, not far from Clervaux Abbey. He spent the next twenty-five years of his life there before his last six months at Clervaux while infirm. Winandy's eremitical life had a profound impact on a revival of the vocation of the hermit in the Catholic Church. (Source: Brandt, M. Charles. "A monk of the Diaspora." The New Catholic Times: 5 Jan 2003.)

Robert Alfred Jump Wilson was owner of the Phoenix Book Shop in New York from 1962 through the late 1980's, where he was an antiquarian bookseller and an author. He currently resides in St. Michaels, Maryland.

Keith Wilson is a poet and professor emeritus and former poet-in-residence from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, New Mexico. His poetry was influenced by his life in the southwest and its native tribes, and the violence Wilson experienced in his tours of duty in the Navy during the Korean War. He has published a number of collections of poetry. (Source: "Keith Wilson." Contemporary Authors Online. 2002. Literature Resource Center. Thomson Gale. Bellarmine University Lib., Louisville, Kentucky. 13 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.

Henry F. Wilson was an aspiring writer from Great Falls, Montana.

Brian Wilson writes from Seoul, South Korea. Like Merton, he was an alumnus of Columbia University. He read «Seven Storey Mountain» in 1955 and was a fan of many of Merton's other books. After completing a Master's degree in anthropology from Stanford University in 1959, he took a job teaching English at the Foreign Language College of Korea. Appalled by conditions in the country, especially the plight of children, he began work to help Korean children.

William Carlos Williams was a poet, novelist, playwright and essayist from Rutherford, New Jersey, where he also maintained a pediatric medical practice. (Source: «The Courage for Truth», p. 289.)

Thomas Williams was formerly a novice of Gethsemani. Merton writes to him in 1964, after he had recently left the monastery.

Robert Lawrence Williams was, at the time of writing to Merton, a tenor vocalist. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but writes to Merton from Boston, Massachusetts, and later from New York. He served as president of the Foundation for African Students of Brighton, Massachusetts. (Source: «The Hidden Ground of Love», p. 587.)

Jonathan Williams is a poet, publisher, designer, photographer and essayist, born in Asheville, North Carolina. After studies at Princeton and painting at the Phillips Memorial Gallery, he returned to Asheville to study photography at Black Mountain College. After his return to North Carolina, he became associated with the Black Mountain group of poets and began a publishing venture, the Jargon Society Books. Williams visited Gethsemani Abbey in January of 1967 with Guy Davenport and Ralph Eugene Meatyard. (Source: «The Courage for Truth», p. 284.)

John R. Williams was an assistant professor of English at Southeastern Louisiana College in Hammond, Louisiana.

Galen Williams was executive secretary of The Poetry Center in New York.

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›.)

C. Dickerman Williams was an attorney from New York who helped Merton to find a lawyer in Louisville to assist him with his literary estate. He wrote a letter to Louisville attorney Wilson W. Wyatt.

Sr. Gertrude Wilkinson was Redemptorist superior and editor of the «New Contemplative Review», to which Merton submitted an article.

John Wilkins was an editor who writes first from the magazine «Frontier» and then from the Catholic magazine, «The Tablet» of London, England.

R. Geoffrey Wilkes was a Catholic from Bilston, Staffordshire, England, who had war-time experience in the Air Force.

Ulfert Wilke was a painter and calligrapher who was born in Germany and came to the United States in 1938. From 1948 to 1964, he was at the Allen R. Hite Institute at the University of Louisville.

Fred D. Wieck was an editor from Harper and Row in New York.

Dom James R. (Samson) Wicksteed was editor of «Cistercian Studies» and writes from the Abbey, Caldey Island, in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

Jo Anne White was secretary to John Ciardi, poetry editor of the «Saturday Review». She writes from New York.

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.

Robert F. Whisler writes from Greenbelt, Maryland.

Victor Weybright writes on behalf of the New American Library of World Literature.

The Rev. Fr. Paul Wessinger was an Anglican priest of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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.

Frances "Tootie" Wesselmann was married to Robert G. Wesselmann.

Jan W. Weryho was a long-time cataloguer for the library of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Mrs. Robert J. Werner writes from Washington, D.C.

Raphael Jehudah Zwi Werblowsky is a scholar of comparative religion. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1924. He taught at Manchester and Leeds Universities in England before going to Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1962.

Joel Wells was editor of «The Critic», published by the Thomas More Association of Chicago, Illinois. He has gone on to write many books concerning Catholicism, humor and social commentary.

Abbie Jane Wells writes from Juneau, Alaska. She would later write the book, «The Gospel According to Abbie Jane Wells: A Sampler».

Walter A. Weisskopf was Professor Emeritus of Economics at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois. He was the author of «The Psychology of Economics» (1955) and «Alienation and Economics» (1971).

Joel Weishaus is a poet and sculptor, who is currently resident writer at the Museu do Essencial e do Além Disso, Bibliothecadas das Marauilhas in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. He has published some of his poetry and haikus, and he wrote the introduction to «Woods, Shore Desert», Merton's journal of his trip to New Mexico, California and Alaska.

Gertrude S. Weiner writes from the Foreign Rights Department of Curtis Brown in New York.

Born in Austria in the end of the 19th Century, Vally Weigl was a composer, music therapist and music instructor. She and her husband, the composer Karl Weigl, moved to New York in 1938 because of the Nazi rise to power and their Jewish ancestry. She taught at the Institute for Avocational Music and the American Theater Wing and continued composing. She received a Master's degree in 1955 from Columbia University and pursued her interests in music therapy, writing and lecturing on the subject and teaching at New York Medical College and the New School. She writes to Merton in 1964 in her new role as chairperson of the Arts for World Unity Committee of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Their theme was World Unity through the Arts. (Source: "Weigl, Vally." Biography from the New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers. 1995. Wilson Biographies Plus. Online. H.W. Wilson. Bellarmine University W.L. Lyons Brown Library, Louisville, KY. 5 Sep. 2006. ‹http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com›.)

Fr. Mark Weidner was the Novice Master of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Trappist abbey in Lafayette, Oregon.