Charles Cameron was a 20-year-old student from Christ Church College in Oxford England. (Source: «The Road to Joy», p. 333.)
Angus Cameron is writing on behalf of Alfred A. Knopf publishers from New York.
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].)
Sr. Annice Callahan corresponded with Merton about the instruction of novices given the changes to religious life in the 1960's. She would later, in 1984, teach a course on Thomas Merton. She writes from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Albany, 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.
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 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.)