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.
Merton writes to Roger Caillois, who was in Buenos Aires at t he time of writing.
D. J. Cahill is writing from the Editorial Department of Burns and Oates publishers from London.
Esther de Cáceres was a poet from Uruguay, whose poetry has been described as both modernist and mystical.
Grace Byrne writes from the offices of Curtis Brown publishers in New York.
Bobby Byrd was a poet writing from Memphis, Tennessee. Some of his poems appear in «Monks Pond». At the time of writing, he was an out of work teacher. He spent over 40 years later in life in El Paso, Texas.
Marie Beuzeville Byles was one of the pioneer Buddhist scholars in Australia, publishing the book, «Footprints of Gautama the Buddha». During their correspondence, she was assaulted and severely injured by an unknown assailant, leaving her with a long period of recovery.
Victor Butterfield was the Chairman of Board of Selection for the E. Harris Harbison Award for Distinguished Teaching. He writes from St. Louis, Missouri.
Suzanne Butorovich was a high school student from Campbell, California. This is one of the longest know series of correspondence he had with a young person. Merton had dinner with her and her family while visiting California on October 3, 1968.
Fr. Paul Bussard was Editor-in-Chief of «The Catholic Digest» and was writing from St. Paul, Minnesota.
Cynthia Bush was Publicity Director for New Directions Publishing Corporation in New York.
C. R. Busby appears to be writing from England.
Edwin Burtt was a professor at Cornell University at this time. He wrote books about the influence of philosophy and metaphysics on science. He had an influence on Aldous Huxley, and like Huxley, started writing more about eastern religions, especially Buddhism, in his later years.
Patricia Burton has produced bibliographies of Thomas Merton and wrote The Book that Never Was: Thomas Merton’s Peace in the Post-Christian Era.
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].)
Dom Flavian Burns (born Thomas Burns in 1931) was Abbot of Gethsemani from 1968-1973. Dom Flavian approved Merton's trip to Bangkok and later approved a side journey in the same trip to India, where Merton met the Dalai Lama. Burns had been inspired by «Seven Storey Mountain» after high school and was drawn to Gethsemani. There, he studied under Merton when Merton was Master of Scholastics. In 1966, after Merton had paved the way for hermits, Burns was allowed to live as a hermit at Gethsemani until taking over as Gethsemani's seventh abbot in 1968. (Source: The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, p. 35.)
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.
Dan Burns was writing from Boystown in Miami, Florida.
Dom Jerome Burke was Abbot of Our Lady of the Genesee in New York.
Professor Herbert Burke was teaching English at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota.
Christoper Burke was the son of Merton's friend, Professor Herbert Burke.
Jeanne Burdick was working in physical medicine and rehabilitation at a veterans' hospital in Topeka, Kansas. Her agnosticism had left her feeling empty but had trouble accepting religious and mystical thought and asks Merton for help in explaining his religious experience.
Shirley Burden was a photographer from Beverly Hills, California.
At the time of writing, Br. Gabriel Bunge was a Benedictine monk of Chevetogne Abbey, a monastery known for seeking reconciliation between Western and Eastern Christianity. He was later ordained as a monk, lived as a hermit in Swiss mountains from the 1980's, and was received into the Orthodox Church as a monk in 2010.
Jacqueline Bull was Head of Special Collections at the University of Kentucky's Margaret I. King Library.
Fr. R. Bùi-bàng-Hiên was writing from Saigon, South Vietnam.
See also, Merton's manuscript essay "Two Comments: 'SENSITIVITY TRAINING' [BY CHARLOTTE BUHLER] AND 'THE AVANT GARDE IN THE ARTS' [BY HENRY WINTHROP AND GERALD SYKES]."
Arthur R. Buckley was an editor for The Seabury Press in New York.
Fr. Vitus Bucher, O.S.B. (Edmund Bucher) was a Benedictine monk of St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota.
Genovefa Brzatynska is writing from Cracow, Poland.
Fr. Gerard Bryan, a monk of Gethsemani, was completing a doctoral dissertation in Rome on St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Teilhard de Chardin. (Source: «The School of Charity», p. 303).
The Western Union Telegram from "A BRYAN" was sent from Clayton, Missouri.
Dame Marcella van Bruyn was a Benedictine nun of Stanbrook Abbey in England. Entering the community in her forties, she spent twenty-three years in community before leaving to pursue a life of solitude. (Source: «The School of Charity», p. 160.)
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 writes now to submit a play written by her friend, Helen De Sola, entitled "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 has 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.)
Frank Bruce was head of the Bruce Publishing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Jane Browne was the Assistant Managing Editor of Hawthorn Books in New York and a friend of another Merton correspondent, Anne Perkins.
Russ Brown was at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario at the time of writing to Merton.
Raphael Brown (Beverly Holladay Brown) was born in New York and spent most of his career as a reference librarian with the Library of Congress, retiring in 1967. He was a member of a secular order of Franciscans and wrote and translated over a dozen books on Catholic topics (Source: The San Diego North County Times [http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2000/06/21/export11191.txt] - online edition, Archives, Obituaries for June 21, 2000).
John Pairman Brown was Professor of Christian Ethics and New Testament at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. He was a member of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and an author.
John B. Brown was a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York at the time of his writing to Merton (Source: «The Road to Joy», p. 369).
Dr. Louis J. Broussard was a consulting psychologist from San Angelo, Texas at the time of writing.
Terry F. Brock was the Editor of the «Catholic Book Annual», published by the Thomas More Association.
Dick Britton writes from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Alan Brilliant was founder of Unicorn Press in Santa Barbara, California and was its Director at the time of writing. He was also married to Teo Savory, who both wrote for and assisted in the editing operations of Unicorn Press.
Besmilr Brigham was born in Pace, Mississippi in 1923. Although spending much in her life traveling to places such as France, Central America, and Mexico, she was living in Horatio, Arkansas, the home of her parents, at the time of correspondence with Merton. She now lives with her daughter and son-in-law, the poet Keith Wilson, in New Mexico. In 1971, she published the book «Heaved from the Earth». Merton had many good things to say about another book she was attempting to publish at the time of writing entitled «The Tiger» (Source: The United States of Poetry website, a program produced by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting [http://www.worldofpoetry.org/usop/word.htm]).
Sr. Bridget was an Anglican religious writing Merton from the Convent of St. Helena in Versailles, Kentucky. By her 1973 correspondence with the Merton Center, she was with the Convent of the Incarnation (Community of the Sisters of the Love of God) in Oxford, England.
Theodore Brenson was writing from New York.
Mother Benedicta Brennan was writing from Monroe, Michigan, a Sister Servant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Bishop Joseph Breitenbeck was serving as the Archdiocese of Detroit at the time of this correspondence.
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.
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.
Barbara Ann Braveman was Assistant Editor for «Freelance» in Clayton (St. Louis), Missouri, at the time of writing.
Br. Charles Brandt was writing from the Trappist monastery of Our Lady of New Melleray in Dubuque, Iowa. After leaving the Trappists he became a priest and hermit on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
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.)
