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›.)
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.)
Cecil Woolf and John Bagguley were editors of the book «Authors Take Sides on Vietnam». The book asked a range of authors to address the following questions: "Are you for, or against, the intervention of the United States in Vietnam?"; and "How, in your opinion, should the conflict in Vietnam be resolved?". Other authors in the volume included: W. H. Auden; William F. Buckley, Jr.; William S. Burroughs; Lawrence Ferlinghetti; and Allen Ginsberg. The book was modeled after «Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War», published in 1937, and compiled by Nancy Cunard. Woolf and Bagguley write to Merton from London.
Jeanne Adams Wray was Managing Editor of the «Cimarron Review», Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Scott Wright was a student in library science at the University of Minnesota. As part of his coursework, he wrote a paper entitled "The Merton-Mailer Vision".
John Wu, Jr. is a professor of philosophy and English literature at Chinese Culture University in Taiwan. He is the son of John C. H. Wu.
Dr. James Wygal was a friend of Merton and served as his psychiatrist during the 1960's. He began work with Gethsemani Abbey's novices in the mid-1950's. For Merton, it may have been an excuse to see a friend and go to Louisville as therapy. He notes in his journals about listening to jazz records with Wygal and once going instead of his appointment with Fr. John Loftus of Bellarmine College to see live jazz. Besides his professional contact with Merton, Wygal served as part of the group raising money for a Merton Room at Bellarmine College.
At the time of writing, Chris Young was a 13-year-old who was planning to enter a high school seminary and someday wanted to be a Trappist monk. A fan of Merton's writings, he wanted to be a writer himself and sent Merton copies of two pieces he had written.
Marguerite Yourcenar was a Belgian-born French novelist. She sends Merton her book «L'Oeuvre au Noir» in 1968.
Gregory Zilboorg was a prominent psychiatrist and convert to Catholicism. Merton obtained a rare permission to leave Gethsemani to hear Gregory Zilboorg lecture at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. Merton spoke privately to Zilboorg of his desire for more solitude and to live as a hermit at Gethsemani or to leave if that were not possible. Zilboorg considered his feelings pathological, a message Dom James, Merton's abbot, was happy to hear. It is questionable whether Zilboorg's harsh criticism, some of which may be defended, was unbiased. Merton's pre-monastic interest in Sigmund Freud was rekindled, and Zilboorg may have felt threatened by another prominent Catholic convert writing on the subject. Zilboorg writes to Merton from New York. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, p. 550.)
Vittorio Emanuele Zino writes from New York.
Alexandra Zoretkin writes from Washington, D.C.
Louis Zukofsky was a poet and professor of English, who was born in New York, where he also spent his professional life. His poetry of the 1930's was considered part of the "objectivist" movement and associated with the work of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. Later, he was rediscovered by the Black Mountain poets. He is known for the collection of poems, entitled "A", which spanned his whole writing career from the 1920's to the 1970's and was published the year of his death. (Source: "Zukofsky, Louis." World Authors. 1975. Online. H.W. Wilson. Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY. 4 Oct. 2006. ‹http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com›.)
Fr. Alfred Pooler was a Passionist priest that helped in the early years of the Thomas Merton Center in contacting people who had been in correspondence with Thomas Merton.
The Editorial Staff of the Catholic Action Federations was writing from Chicago, Illinois, and included: Peter Foote, John J. Hill, Lawrence Kelly, John McCudden, and Theodore C. Stone.
Robert Bonazzi was founder and editor of Latitudes magazine, which began in 1966.
Owen Merton was Thomas Merton's father. He was born in New Zealand, studied art in Paris, and traveled in Europe, Bermuda, the United States, and northern Africa to make a living as a landscape painter.
Naomi Burton Stone was Merton's literary agent who became a close friend and confidant. She was born in England and came to the United States in 1939. She took an early interest in Merton's work and was trying, unsuccessfully, to publish his early novels before he entered the monastery. However, she at first thought his writing career had ended when he entered the monastery. Later, Merton would send her a manuscript of The Seven Storey Mountain. In late 1946, she met with success in submitting it to Robert Giroux, who published and edited the best-selling book. (Source: Witness to Freedom, p. 123.)
Betty Delius was director of Bellarmine College Library at the time of correspondence with her in 1960.
Sibylle Akers was born in Dresden, Germany. She left Germany after the Second World War and moved to Texas. She was a well-known photographer. In September of 1959, she visited Gethsemani and took 26 photographs of Merton that are now part of the Merton Center collection. Akers sends letters and postcards from a visit to Europe in the mid-sixties. In 1965, she moved to Washington, D.C., because her husband was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson as Director of the U.S. Information Agency.
Marquita Breit retired as director of the library of Bellarmine University having served as a librarian for the college. She co-produced bibliographies of Thomas Merton’s primary and secondary sources.
Barbara Hubbard was a futurist scholar and, in 1992, became the President and co-founder of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, whose vision is "the awakening of the spiritual, social, and scientific potential of humanity, in harmony with nature for the highest good of all life." Hubbard earned degrees from Bryn Mawr College, the Sorbonne and L’Ecole des Sciences Politiques in Paris. In addition, she was awarded the Emerson Theological Institute's first Doctor of Conscious Evolution degree. She was a nominee for Vice-President on the Democratic ticket in 1984 and had since advocated for a Peace Room in the White House. Her work in the futurist field began in the 1960's when she began a pioneering newsletter in evolutionary transformation entitled The Center Letter of the Center of American Living in New York. She writes to Merton from Lakeville, Connecticut. (Source: "About FCE’s Founder, Dr. Barbara Marx Hubbard". Foundation for Conscious Evolution, ‹https://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com/leadership›, Accessed 2020/04/15.)
Br. John Lyons was a Salvatorian writing first from Mount St. Paul College in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and later from New Holstein, Wisconsin.
Daniel Walsh was a life-long educator and one of the most influential professors on Merton's life. After earning a doctorate at University of Toronto alongside Étienne Gilson, Walsh became professor at Manhattanville College in New York from 1934-1960. In addition, he was a visiting professor of philosophy at Columbia from 1936-1955, and afterward serving as an adjunct professor at Columbia. In 1939, Merton had Walsh for a course on St. Thomas Aquinas. At the bar of the Biltmore Hotel in New York in 1939, Merton told Walsh of his interest in religious life. After mentioning difference orders, including that he was impressed by the Trappists at Gethsemani Abbey, Walsh recommended the Franciscans. Merton would later be rejected by the Franciscans, but remember Walsh's praise of the Trappists. Later, Walsh would join Merton at Gethsemani Abbey in 1960 as a advisor and new professor for the abbey's philosophy program. He soon became a visiting professor at Bellarmine College in Louisville. Archbishop John Floersh offered to ordain the sixty-year-old Walsh a priest in 1967. A surprised but delighted Walsh was ordained at St. Thomas Seminary, a ceremony attended by Merton. Walsh died in 1975 and is buried near the monastic enclosure at Gethsemani Abbey. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, pp. 515-516.)
Dom Inácio Accioly was abbot of the Mosteiro de São Bento in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
At the time of correspondence, Gregorio Pietro Cardinal Agagianian was Patriarch of Cilicia and of Armenia. He sends his letter and preface for «The Living Bread» from Beirut in December of 1955. Merton notes in a published letter to Sr. Therese Lentfoehr («The Hidden Ground of Love», p. 222) that Cardinal Agagianian's preface will not appear in the first printing of the book. However, by the first printing in 1956, it seems to have made it in.
Fr. Barnabas Ahern was a Passionist priest involved in a new Catholic Bible translation effort. He offered Merton advice on biblical instruction, instruction of novices, and reviewed Merton's early manuscripts and books. See the following link for more information on Fr. Ahern: https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=92274263.
Mother Mary Aidan was a superior of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.