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.)
Fr. Kevin Bracken was a Trappist monk from Our Lady of Bethlehem Abbey in Portglenone, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
Tony Boyd was a seventh-grader writing from Ashland, Kentucky.
Mrs. Pauline B. Boyd is writing from St. Charles, Missouri.
Alda Lee Boyd was Publicity Director for the Seabury Press in 1967.
Mrs. R. M. Bowman writes from Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Fr. Charles Bowers was at the Chaplain's Residence of Lidcombe Hospital in Lidcombe, Australia at the time of writing.
Abbot Louis Boutoute was Vicar of Saint-Flour Cathedral in Cantal, France.
Fr. Bousquet is writing from Nice, France.
Russell Bourne was an editor working for Time-Life Books in New York. He follows up Abraham Heschel's inquiry about writing an essay for the Time-Life Illustrated and Annotated Bible.
Fr. Paul Bourne was the head censor (now called "reader") of the Cistercian Order and needed to approve of Merton's writings before he received the «Imprimi Potest», or permission to publish, from his Order and the Church. He was more considerably more friendly with Merton and more lenient of his works than other censors. Fr. Paul was at Our Lady of the Holy Ghost Abbey (now called the Monastery of the Holy Spirit) in Conyers, Georgia. (Source: «The School of Charity», p. 168.)
Nina Bourne was writing on behalf of the publishing house of Simon and Schuster.
Daniel Bouchez was a professor at the seminary of Holy Ghost College in Seoul, South Korea.
Boucher was a former Carmelite.
Fr. Gregorio Botte was a Franciscan writing from Mount Alvernia Seminary in Wappinger Falls, New York.
Fr. Maurice Boscher is writing from Tahiti.
Cameron Borton is writing as Pastor of the North Congregational Church in Winchendon, Massachusetts.
Fr. Gregory was a Benedictine at Mount Saviour Monastery near Elmira, New York. He went with Dom Aelred Wall to Abiquiu, New Mexico, to found the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.
Mrs. A. Boodoosingh was Foreign Rights Secretary for Darton, Longman and Todd Limited in London.
Paul Hyde Bonner's letterhead states he is writing from "The Teacherage" in Summerville, South Carolina.
Fred Bond is writing on behalf of the Louisville Art Workshop.
Robert Bonazzi was founder and editor of Latitudes magazine, which began in 1966.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Serge Bolshakoff received a doctorate in philosophy from Christ Church, Oxford. In his travels to churches and monasteries in promotion of Christian unity, he became acquainted with such notables as Pope John XXIII, Patriarch Athenagoras, Archbishop Temple of Canterbury, as well as the Abbot General of the Cistercians, Dom Gabriel Sortais (see "Sortais, Gabriel" and "Fox, James" files).
Jan Boggs was a sophomore at Niskayuna High School in New York.
Sr. Bogdana is writing from the Congregation of the Sacred Heart in Krakow, Poland.
Genowefa Bogatynska writes from Poland.
Merton remembered Nancy Hauck Boettcher when he was young and she was a baby in Long Island. After the death of Merton's mother Ruth in 1921, Nancy's grandmother, Freida "Nanny" Hauck came to help Merton's grandparents take care of Thomas and John Paul Merton. Nancy's aunt Elsie married Merton's uncle Harold Jenkins. Harold and Elsie took care of Nanny Hauck at first. According to Nancy, they "threw her out of their house", and she came to live with Walter and Ruth Hauck, Nancy's parents. The difficult situation of her parents taking care of Nanny is the subject of the first letter. At this time, Nancy was married, had a couple of children, and was unable to assist her parents with the care of Nanny. (Source: «The Road to Joy», pp. 57 and 65.)
Dr. C. W. van Boekel is writing from the Netherlands on behalf of the Dutch periodical «Ons Geestelijk Leven»
At the time of writing, Fon W. Boardman, Jr. was Vice-President of Oxford University Press in New York.
"Carmen Blumenkron is a product of two cultures: American and Mexican, though her heritage is "Long Island Yankee," Irish, German and Spanish. Born in Manhattan, she grew up in Mexico City, where she now lives, spending her free time at her country home in Cuernavaca… She writes poetry in English, Spanish and French…" (Source: "Biographical Sketch" from this file.)
Judy Blanchard desired to become a hermit sought the help of Dom Jacques Winandy, a hermit from Canada, whom Merton had recommended to her.
Mary Childs Black was, at time of writing, Director of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection in Williamsburg, Virginia. (See also the Finding Aid to the Mary Black Papers at the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library [http://findingaid.winterthur.org/html/col538.html]).
Hector Black is writing on behalf of Plough Publishing House. It was affiliated with the Society of Brothers, a Bruderhof Community, in Farmington, Pennsylvania.
Dom Colomban Bissey served as Abbot of Melleray in France, the mother house of the Abbey of Gethsemani, from 1958-1986. He conducted visitations to Gethsemani as he was Gethsemani's Father Immediate.
