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Central Standard

Thomas Merton's Belongings Resurface In Missouri, Nearly 50 Years After His Death

Rebecca Smith
/
KBIA
The late Thomas Merton's T-shirt and work shirt are just a few of the items that author John Smelcer uncovered this summer. All of Merton's clothing bears the number '127.'

During Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S. last month, he praised the late Thomas Merton as one of four great Americans. Merton was one of the most influential Catholic writers of the 20th century. He spent the last twenty years of his life as a Trappist Monk in a monastery called the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

After his death, his writings remained in the public sphere, but it seemed that little else was left from the man who inspired so many. But this summer, hundreds of his items reappeared in Missouri.

Every Sunday, she’d join him at the monastery for guidance. Sometimes another monk would come with them. His name was Brother Irenaeus. Over time, Irenaeus and Helen Marie fell in love. But they were conflicted, as Monastic vows prevented them from being married. So, they asked Merton.

“He said ‘you've gotten everything there is to get out of your monastic life,’" Helen Marie said. "He said ‘grow in new areas. Grow beyond that.’ And I never forgot that.”

Shortly after his death, Helen Marie and Brother Irenaeus left the convent, taking with them Merton’s belongings that Irenaeus had been charged with. They married and eventually moved to Kansas City for work. And for 50 years, all of Merton’s things stayed hidden in two large trunks under the clutter of Helen Marie’s garage. After her husband died in 2009, she didn’t know what to do with them. So she prayed.

“I felt that I should share this, not to keep it for myself," Helen Marie said. "And then when John came, I was so happy. Because I knew it was an answer to prayer.” 

Helen Marie gave John Smelcer the belongings she had been keeping, trusting him to deliver them to the right places.

Smelcer spent the rest of the summer researching the items, where they came from and who they should go to next. Finally, he found the Dr. Paul Pearson, and the Thomas Merton Center in Louisville, Kentucky, of which Pearson is the executive director.

Smelcer drove from Kirksville to Kentucky in late July to show Pearson pictures of what he had.

"I was just amazed that this collection had survived, and it was really quite fortuitous the events that had brought it to his attention and then John getting in touch with us," Pearson said.

Smelcer had clothes, letters and photographs. He even had underwear. Merton’s things weren’t in pristine condition. They were ripped up, covered in dirt and paint, and threadbare. But not because they hadn’t been stored properly – the items seem so poor because Merton spent his days at the abbey doing manual labor.

“One of the things I've noticed from looking at these clothes especially, is they prove that Merton walked the walk. He lived the poor monk.”

Like any object claimed to be from a famous person, these objects had to be vetted, but Merton's clothes came with an easy identifier.

“Every single piece of clothing of Thomas Merton, has this on it, someplace," Smelcer said. "It's a little tag with the number 127. And here's what it is. It's a laundry tag”

The number is scribbled in pen on the collar of his T-shirts or in Sharpie on patches that had been sewn in. Some of them even have one or two numbers crossed out before Merton’s, meaning they were hand-me-downs from monks who had died.

Smelcer donated most of the items to the Thomas Merton Center in Louisville, but he also has items that he is working to send to places like the Thomas Merton Center for Social Justice in Pittsburgh and Columbia University, where Merton studied. He is even working to send one of Merton's work shirts to Pope Francis. 

“It seems to be kind of coming full circle in a way, and these materials that had been Merton's at the time of his death were coming home to roost," Pearson said. 

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