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Hoyt W. Fuller was Managing Editor of «Negro Digest» and writes from Chicago, Illinois.

Eldress Marguerite Frost was from the Shaker community at Canterbury, New Hampshire.

Jim Frost was a sophomore in high school in Waterloo, Iowa.

Ernst Fromm was Director of Livraria AGIR Editóra (Artes, Gráficas, Indústrias, Reunidas, S.A. [AGIR]) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Erich Fromm was born in 1900 in Frankfurt, Germany. He left Nazi Germany in 1934 and came to New York. After teaching at a number of universities, he became professor of psychoanalysis at the National University of Mexico in 1951. Fromm was an author, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and anthropologist. Religiously, he had a Jewish upbringing and a background in the Talmud. In his adult life, he was atheist, but stressed a non-theistic spirituality that he found in the writings of Karl Marx, who was a profound influence on his view of human adjustment to society and which shaped his writings on psychoanalysis. (Source: «The Hidden Ground of Love», p. 308.)

Roberto Friol is a Cuban poet who sent some of his work to Merton.

Horace L. Friess was writing to the Nobel Institute on behalf of Thich Nhat Hanh. Friess was a professor of philosophy and religion at Columbia University.

Fr. Richard Friedrich was the Associate Dean of Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky.

Jacqueline Frieder was Contributing Editor to «American Dialog», a literary magazine with a politically progressive bent and a strong group of contributors that was active from 1964-1972. Frieder writes from New York.

Jerome Fried was an editor for New Directions publishing.

Br. Roger Frety was from the Little Brothers of Jesus in Detroit, Michigan.

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.)

Anne Freedgood was editor in the Anchor Books division of Doubleday publishing in New York. She was also the wife of Merton's Columbia friend Seymour Freedgood.

Claude Fredericks was a typesetter and printer of fine books who founded Banyan Press in the late 1940s.

Howard Frankl met Ernesto Cardenal while in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Cardenal was Frankl's godfather and instructed him in catechism. Frankl spent over two months as a retreatant at the Benedictine community of Nuestra Senora de la Resurrecion. This was the community of another Merton correspondent, Dom Gregorio Lemercier. Under pressure from the Vatican, the community was disbanded and Lemercier laicized in the late 1960's. Ernesto Cardenal shared his Merton correspondence with Frankl. Cardenal liked Frankl's poems and translated some of them into Spanish. Frankl initiates correspondence with Merton by sending some of his poems.

Jerome D. Frank was a psychiatrist at Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic in Baltimore, Maryland.

Fr. François de Ste. Marie was a Carmelite priest and editor of «La Vigne du Carmel: Collection de Spiritualité».

Sr. Franciscana was a Franciscan sister at St. Anthony Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky.

Mother M. Francis was abbess of the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Roswell, New Mexico.

Merton writes to Mrs. John T. Francis of Louisville, Kentucky.

Archbishop Theodore Labrador Fraile was a Dominican later ordained archbishop in Foochow, China.

Fr. Andre Frachebourd writes from the Abbey of Notre Dame de Tamié in France.

Msgr. Robert J. Fox was from the Archdiocese of New York in the office of Spanish Community Action. He died in 1984 at the age of 54.

Fr. Matthew Fox (Br. Matthew in his letter to Merton) was a Dominican priest who stirred up quite a following and much controversy over his ideas about creation spirituality, denial of original sin, interfaith unity and ecological Christianity. The Vatican had him silenced and he was dismissed from the Dominicans. In 1994, he was accepted by an Episcopal bishop in California. At the time of writing to Merton, he was still in his graduate studies with the Dominicans.

Dom James Fox came to Gethsemani in 1927. He was serving as guestmaster when Merton's younger brother, John Paul, visited the monastery, and Fox made arrangements for John Paul's baptism. In 1948, Fox was elected abbot after the death of Dom Frederic Dunne. Fox had a keen business sense, a graduate of Harvard Business School prior to entering Gethsemani, and helped Gethsemani support itself financially through mechanization of the farm and through establishment of a mail order cheese and bourbon fruit cake business. Merton was not a fan of this mechanization, the cheese business, and had other philosophical differences with Fox. Although much has been written about their rocky relationship at times, Fox went out of his way to ensure that Merton had greater solitude in his later years, a decision which likely kept Merton at Gethsemani. He had enough faith in Merton to appoint him as his novice master and as Fox's personal confessor. Fox would eventually step down as abbot in 1967 to pursue to live as a hermit as Merton had done. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, edited by William Shannon, Christine Bochen, and Patrick O'Connell, pp.160-161.)

Br. Dunstan Foretich was a Trappist monk at Gethsemani. He seemed to have been serving as a typist for Merton until he left the monastery in 1966.

Linda married James Forest in 1967 and briefly corresponded with Merton.

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.

John J. Ford succeeded William Dwyer as attorney for the Merton Legacy Trust, which drew up Merton's will and made agreements about the use of his artistic estate after his death.

Jack Ford was a philosophy professor at Bellarmine College during his correspondence with Merton and who later taught at University of Louisville. He and Merton met around 1960 and later developed a friendship.

Fr. John C. Ford was a Jesuit priest writing from Washington, D.C. He was a professor at a number of universities, including Boston College and Weston College in Massachusetts. He founded the journal «Theological Studies».

David Ford was an editor at New Directions publishing in Norfolk, Connecticut.

Anne Ford was an author and publishing executive for Houghton Mifflin Company in Boston, Massachusetts.

Claude Forcellino writes from La Borie Noble, one of the Communautés de l'Arche of Joseph Jean Lanza del Vasto in France.

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/›.)

Charles Fogarty was a high school student considering a vocation to the priesthood or religious life and asks Merton whether the vocation of a Trappist fulfills "Our Lord's Commandment to go and preach the Gospel to every living creature."

Archbishop John Floersh served as bishop of Louisville archdiocese from 1924-1967.

Flanagan, usually publishing under Fr. M. Raymond, was another Gethsemani author whose writing career started in the early forties, slightly before Merton's, and ran contemporaneously with Merton's through the late sixties. Quite different in style and substance from Merton's work, Flanagan's books include «The Man Who Got Even with God», «God Goes to Murderers Row», and «Burnt-Out Incense». Merton and Flanagan often saw each other at opposing ends of disagreements about theology or the training of novices.

James T. Flanagan was an attorney with the law offices of Driscoll, Flanagan and Ramos from New Orleans, Louisiana.

Archbishop George Bernard Flahiff, elevated to Cardinal in 1969, was bishop of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. At the Second Vatican Council, he was involved in what was known as Schema 13, which became «Gaudium et Spes», the Pontifical Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Merton was particularly interested in the sections on peace, war, and how it would address nuclear weapons.

Fr. Daniel L. Flaherty was a Jesuit priest and book editor for «America» magazine.

James Fitzsimmons was editor of «The Lugano Review» and writes from Switzerland.

Sr. Patricia Fitzpatrick was a Benedictine from Mount Saint Benedict Convent and Corbett College in Crookston, Minnesota.

Robert J. Fitzgibbon was editor of «Family Weekly» and writes from New York.

Wesley First was director of the office of University Relations at Columbia University in New York.