

We share the same mother, who early in our lives was diagnosed as mentally ill. It also addresses the mental issues of their mother, Gladys, and the sisters' consequently troubling childhoods, both lacking a mother figure: Miracle co-authored the book with her daughter Mona it tells the story of her rare meet-ups with Monroe, up until the latter's death. My Sister Marilyn: A Memoir of Marilyn Monroe was published on J(on Monroe's birthday and 50 years after the half-sisters first met). Miracle died on May 25, 2014, at the age of 94. Throughout her life, Miracle avoided the media and worked as a manufacturing inspector, bookkeeper and costume designer. She had so many things to look forward to and she was so happy." She told me what she had planned to do, she had just bought a new house and she was working on the curtains of the windows. It could have been an accident, because I had just talked to her a short time before. In an interview with ina.fr, she stated: Along with Monroe's second husband, Joe DiMaggio, and her business manager, Inez Melson, Miracle arranged the funeral, choosing the casket and dress. Monroe died a year later and left Miracle $10,000 in her final will. She remained in contact with her sister, who visited her in 1961 in her New York home, after Monroe had divorced her third husband, Arthur Miller, and had undergone surgery for her cholecystectomy. At the same time, Norma Jean began a modeling career and became an actress under the stage name Marilyn Monroe. The half-sisters met in 1944, after exchanging letters and pictures. ĭuring the pregnancy, Miracle received a letter from her mother, informing her that she had a sister, Norma Jean. Their only child, Mona Rae Miracle, was born on July 18, 1939, twelve days before Miracle's 20th birthday. Two years later, Berniece Baker began attending Pineville High School. In 1933, Robert Baker died from kidney failure. Gladys soon remarried and gave birth to a third child, Norma Jean Baker. Following the divorce, Jasper kidnapped Berniece and her brother, Robert Kermit, and raised them in his native Kentucky. Her parents, Gladys Pearl Baker and Jasper Newton "Jap" Baker (1886–1951), were married in 1917. Berniece Inez Gladys Miracle ( née Baker J– May 25, 2014) was an American writer, known for her memoir My Sister Marilyn (1994) about her half-sister, actress Marilyn Monroe.īerniece Baker was born in Venice, California on July 30, 1919.
