Fr. Jean-Marie Déchanet was a monk of Sint-Andriesabdij (Abbaye de Saint-André) near Bruges, Belgium. In 1956, he wrote the book «Christian Yoga». By his 1961 letters, he was living in a monastic foundation in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Moshe Decter was executive secretary for the Conference on the Status of Soviet Jews and writes from New York.
Valerie Delacorte was writing from New York.
John J. Delaney was an editor for Doubleday and Company in New York.
Fr. Jean Delat writes from the Trappist monastery of the Abbaye Sainte Marie du Désert in France.
At the time of Merton's letter to Dellinger, he was publisher and editor of «Liberation» magazine (Merton seemingly did not know Dellinger and addresses the letter "To the editor of Liberation"). Born into a prominent New England Republican family in 1815, Dellinger seemed destined to be a leader in the capitalist system he would later oppose. After earning an economics degree from Yale, he spent a year in Yale's Divinity School and another year in Union Theological Seminary in New York. Although he did not follow a vocation to the Christian clergy, he seems to have formulated a pacifist stand during these years and refused military conscription in 1940. He served a year in federal prison for this offense and later two more years for draft resistance during the Second World War. After founding a co-operative community with a farm and a newspaper, he founded «Liberation» magazine in 1956. The magazine was well-respected in the political left for its coverage of war resistance, social justice, and was one of the first national publications to recognize the significance of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement. He achieved some of his greatest notoriety during his protests of the Vietnam War, helping organize the first major protest against the Vietnam War in New York, the October 1965 Fifth Avenue Peace Parade. An organizer of the protest at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he was arrested with others who became known as the Chicago Seven. (Source: "Dellinger, David." Obituary from Current Biography. 2004. Wilson Biographies Plus. Online. H.W. Wilson. Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY. 5 Oct. 2006. ‹http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com›.)
Fr. Don Derivaux, known in his 18 years at Gethsemani as Francis, had later left the Trappists to become a priest in Mississippi. In 1965, while still with Gethsemani and studying in Rome, Merton writes and tells him of events at the abbey and of racial tensions in the south. Though he considers becoming laicized in his letter of 1968 to Merton, he remained a priest and has recently retired as a hermit.
Christopher Derrick became editor of «Good Work», a publication of the Catholic Art Association. He writes from England.
Fr. Richard Devine was a Vincentian priest and dean of the graduate school at St. John's University in New York.
Dom Willibrord-Christian van Dijk was abbot of the Trappist Abbey of Tilburg in the Netherlands from 1945-1966, during which time he founded the monastery at Rawa Seneng in Indonesia, first visiting in 1952. He returned to Indonesia as superior from 1966-1968, when he had to resign due to an eye disease. He later moved to the Maria Frieden Abbey to live with the Trappistine sisters there in Germany. He regretted having to leave for Germany before Merton could have made it to see him in Asia.
Fr. Anselme Dimier was a Cistercian monk and author, first writing to Merton from the Abbey of Tamié in France and later from the Abbey of Scourmont in Belgium. Much of the discussion concerns a French translation of «The Waters of Siloë».
Sr. Irmá Dionísia was writing from Curitiba, Brazil.
Ray DiPalma is the author of a number of books of poetry. Merton was considering a poem of his for «Monks Pond».
According to a letter in this file from Br. Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O. dated 2001, Fr. James Dodge (known as Frater Linus while with the Trappists) was a novice with Merton in 1941-1942. He later went to Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina after its founding in 1949. After staying at Mepkin a few years, he left to become a parish priest.
Fr. Linus was a monk of Gethsemani Abbey writing to Merton while away at studies in Rome.
Joseph Dolan was administrative assistant to Robert F. Kennedy while Kennedy was serving as a United States Senator from New York.
Pierre Dommerques was an Assistant Professor at the Sorbonne in the Institute of English and American Studies at the time of corresponding with Merton.
Fr. Felix Donahue was a Trappist monk of Gethsemani. At the time of correspondence, he was studying in Rome and trying to vote by proxy in the abbatial election to replace Dom James Fox. He would later join the Trappist foundation of Nossa Senhora do Novo Mundo in Brazil.
Ivanhoe Donaldson was working with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) while corresponding with Merton. He worked alongside another Merton correspondent from this time, Marion Barry, who would later become mayor of Washington, D.C. He served as an advisor to Barry from the sixties to the eighties and was involved in Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign.
Professor Filippo Donini was Director of the Institute of Italian Culture at the Italian Embassy in New York.
Thomas Thompson writes from Dußlingen (Dusslingen), West Germany. He spent half a year at Gethsemani Abbey while Merton was Novice Master, under the name Frater William. He re-entered lay life to study and teach theology and was getting a doctorate in Germany at the time of writing.
David Tillson writes from Brockport, New York.
Amedeo Tintori writes from Livorno, Italy, concerning Merton's article "Monastic Peace".
Paolo Toufenti writes from Rome, Italy.
Vincent Tovell writes on behalf of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Ricardo Trigueros de León was Director General of Publications for the Ministry of Education in San Salvador, El Salvador.
Laurens van der Post was a writer born in South Africa. He writes about the conflicts of having been born into a Boer family, educated by the British who had recently defeated them, and hating the system of apartheid. His attacks on South African apartheid in a magazine he co-founded in his youth, «Voorslag», led to his exile. He spent some time in Japan and later joined the British army in 1939. He served in the Second World War. After the war, he was send on a mission by the British government's Colonial Development Corporation, which took him into the African interior. He began to write some travelogues and novels with influences of Jungian psychology. He saw racial tensions in light of the conflict between our interior battles between our primitive and civilized self, and racism as exteriorizing our interior hatred of the primitive self to what we perceive as primitive in other groups. Other themes of mysticism and interiority occur in his novels, prompting Merton's interest in them. (Source: "Van der Post, Laurens". World Authors 1950-1970. 1975. Wilson Biographies Plus. Online. H.W. Wilson. Bellarmine University Library, Louisville, KY. 18 July 2006. ‹http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com›.)
Charles Lincoln Van Doren was the son of famed poet Mark Van Doren, Mark having been one of Merton's professors at Columbia University. Charles became an scholar and professor at Columbia University, as well, but his legacy was later overshadowed by scandal. He was a long-term contestant on the game show Twenty-One. His winning streak was later revealed as a fraud.
Mark Van Doren won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1940 for his 1939 volume of collected poems and was a literary critic and professor. He had a profound effect on Merton as a professor of English at Columbia University in New York. Van Doren was at Columbia from 1920 to 1959. Merton stayed in contact with Van Doren after leaving Columbia and after entering the monastery. Van Doren selected the pieces for Merton's «Thirty Poems» and helped get them published. Merton also knew Van Doren's wife, Dorothy, and sons Charles and John. Mark Van Doren visited Merton at Gethsemani a few times and met once with him in Louisville. (Source: «The Road to Joy», p. 3.)
The Rev. Dale L. Van Meter writes from Medfield, Massachusetts. He was working on a Masters degree in Social Work from Boston College at the time of writing to Merton.
Dom Hubert Van Zeller was a Benedictine monk of Downside Abbey in England and scholar on the monastic life. He authored a number of books and articles on the contemplative life, the scriptures and monasticism.
Fr. Lambert Vandermeulen was a monk of St. Benedictus-Abdij, a Cistercian monastery in Achel, Belgium.
Fr. Joseph Vann was a Franciscan friar and one of the founding fathers of St. Bernardine of Siena College in Loudonville, New York, an extension of St. Bonaventure College.
Maria de Varela was a professor at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina.
James G. Vargiu writes while on vacation in Italy, but permanently resided in Palo Alto, California.
Fr. Roman J. Verostko was Staff Editor for Art for «The New Catholic Encyclopedia» and writes from Washington, D.C.
Germaine Vignolle writes from Marseille, France.
Fr. Vincent Mary was a Passionist priest. He writes from St. Bernard's Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, where he was going to conduct a retreat for the nuns.
Fr. Urban Voll was a Dominican priest and an editor for the «Catholic Theological Encyclopedia». He writes from Washington, D.C.
Dom Aelred Wall was the founder of Christ in the Desert Monastery in Abiquiu, New Mexico, and was its first superior.
Sr. Anita (Ann) Wasserman was a nun from the Carmelite Convent of Cleveland, Ohio. She had written to Merton before entering the Carmelites in 1952. She died in April of 2015 at 82. Her brother, Edmund, had entered Gethsemani Abbey and was a good friend of Merton's. His name in religion was Fr. John of the Cross, whom Merton referred to by the nicknames "Cap" or "Cappy". The Wasserman family met with Merton when coming to Gethsemani, "adopting" him into the family. (Source: «Witness to Freedom», p. 177.)
Peter Watts was a British sculptor from Bath, England, who sculpted many of the statues at Gethsemani Abbey.
Born in Austria in the end of the 19th Century, Vally Weigl was a composer, music therapist and music instructor. She and her husband, the composer Karl Weigl, moved to New York in 1938 because of the Nazi rise to power and their Jewish ancestry. She taught at the Institute for Avocational Music and the American Theater Wing and continued composing. She received a Master's degree in 1955 from Columbia University and pursued her interests in music therapy, writing and lecturing on the subject and teaching at New York Medical College and the New School. She writes to Merton in 1964 in her new role as chairperson of the Arts for World Unity Committee of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Their theme was World Unity through the Arts. (Source: "Weigl, Vally." Biography from the New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers. 1995. Wilson Biographies Plus. Online. H.W. Wilson. Bellarmine University W.L. Lyons Brown Library, Louisville, KY. 5 Sep. 2006. ‹http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com›.)
Gertrude S. Weiner writes from the Foreign Rights Department of Curtis Brown in New York.
Joel Weishaus is a poet and sculptor, who is currently resident writer at the Museu do Essencial e do Além Disso, Bibliothecadas das Marauilhas in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. He has published some of his poetry and haikus, and he wrote the introduction to «Woods, Shore Desert», Merton's journal of his trip to New Mexico, California and Alaska.
Walter A. Weisskopf was Professor Emeritus of Economics at Roosevelt University in Chicago, Illinois. He was the author of «The Psychology of Economics» (1955) and «Alienation and Economics» (1971).
Ulfert Wilke was a painter and calligrapher who was born in Germany and came to the United States in 1938. From 1948 to 1964, he was at the Allen R. Hite Institute at the University of Louisville.
R. Geoffrey Wilkes was a Catholic from Bilston, Staffordshire, England, who had war-time experience in the Air Force.
Sr. Gertrude Wilkinson was Redemptorist superior and editor of the «New Contemplative Review», to which Merton submitted an article.
Galen Williams was executive secretary of The Poetry Center in New York.
Jonathan Williams is a poet, publisher, designer, photographer and essayist, born in Asheville, North Carolina. After studies at Princeton and painting at the Phillips Memorial Gallery, he returned to Asheville to study photography at Black Mountain College. After his return to North Carolina, he became associated with the Black Mountain group of poets and began a publishing venture, the Jargon Society Books. Williams visited Gethsemani Abbey in January of 1967 with Guy Davenport and Ralph Eugene Meatyard. (Source: «The Courage for Truth», p. 284.)
Henry F. Wilson was an aspiring writer from Great Falls, Montana.
Robert Alfred Jump Wilson was owner of the Phoenix Book Shop in New York from 1962 through the late 1980's, where he was an antiquarian bookseller and an author. He currently resides in St. Michaels, Maryland.
Dom Jacques Winandy was born in Liege, Belgium, in the early 20th century and became a Benedictine monk Clervaux Abbey in Luxemburg. This was a compromise for him. His father wanted him to enter a Benedictine abbey closer to home rather than follow his dreams of becoming a Carthusian. Carthusians are a monastic order living in community but spending most of the day, besides Mass and two of offices of prayer, in solitude in one's cell. During World War II, the monks of Clervaux lived in exile in religious houses in Belgium. Winandy was excepted as a Carthusian during this time; however, he was elected as abbot of Clervaux immediately after the war, a role he reluctantly accepted. He served as abbot until 1957. He spent time as a hermit before, after a year in Rome, being sent to the Benedictine abbey in Martinique. There he met Br. (now Fr.) Lionel Pare. Pare shared Winandy's interest in the eremitical life. They obtained permission to start of group of hermits, living individually but under the direction of an elder in 1964. They found an amenable bishop, Bishop Remi De Roo and the space for solitude on the Tsolum River in British Columbia, Canada, near Merville. Winandy remained in a hermitage in British Columbia until 1972, when he returned to a hermitage in Belgium, not far from Clervaux Abbey. He spent the next twenty-five years of his life there before his last six months at Clervaux while infirm. Winandy's eremitical life had a profound impact on a revival of the vocation of the hermit in the Catholic Church. (Source: Brandt, M. Charles. "A monk of the Diaspora." The New Catholic Times: 5 Jan 2003.)
William Witherup is a poet, playwright and performance artist. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in Richland, Washington. He writes to Merton from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and living in a cabin in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. He has published a number of volumes of poetry. His poetry has focused on labor, environmentalism, and his father's working-class life in the nuclear industry. (Source: "William Witherup." Contemporary Authors Online. 2002. Literature Resource Center. Thomson Gale. Bellarmine University Lib., Louisville, Kentucky. 15 Sep. 2006 ‹http://galenet.galegroup.com›.)
Frances Witlin writes on behalf of the Good-Will Ambassadors for the Hiroshima-Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission.
Princess Monica Wittgenstein writes from Cologne, Germany.
Fr. Augustine Wulff was a Trappist monk of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky.
Nobuzō Yamada writes from Hiroshima, Japan. He mentions visiting Merton at Gethsemani Abbey in 1964. He was likely among the delegation for the World Peace Mission Pilgrimage of Hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Fr. Joseph Minoru Yamaguchi was a Marianist priest writing from Tokyo, Japan.
Bonnie Young was Assistant Curator of the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
John Yungblut is a Quaker scholar and scholar of Jungian psychology. One of his academic aims is arguing for the place of Christian mysticism. He was married to June Yungblut. He writes from the Quaker House (Society of Friends) in Atlanta, Georgia, which he co-directed with his wife, June.
Msgr. Vincent Arthur Yzermans took over as editor of «Our Sunday Visitor» and its affiliate magazine, «The Priest», in the fall of 1967. He was a priest from Minnesota.
Sr. Jean Zmolek was a School Sister of Notre Dame from Notre Dame Academy in Omaha, Nebraska, at the time of writing to Merton.
Ambassador Soedjatmoko writes from the Embassy of Indonesia in Washington, D.C. Raden Soedjatmoko Saleh Mangoediningrat went also by the nickname "Mas Koko" or simply "Koko". By the end of their five hour meeting in Washington, D.C., the two men referred to each other as Tom and Koko.
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.
