Berniece Baker Miracle

Berniece Baker was born in Venice, California on July 30, 1919. Her parents, Gladys Pearl Monroe and Jasper Newton "Jap" Baker (1886–1951), were married in 1917. Following their divorce in 1921, Jasper kidnapped Berniece and her brother, Robert Kermit, and raised them in his native Kentucky.[1] Gladys soon remarried and gave birth to a third child, Norma Jean Baker.[2]

In 1933, Robert Baker died from kidney failure.[3] Two years later, Berniece Baker began attending Pineville High School. She married Paris Miracle (1918–1990) in 1938.[4] Their only child, Mona Rae Miracle, was born on July 18, 1939, twelve days before Miracle's 20th birthday. Mona is married to William Joseph Booth.[5]

During the pregnancy, Miracle received a letter from her mother, informing her that she had a sister, Norma Jean.[6][7] The half-sisters met in 1944 after exchanging letters and pictures.[8] At the same time, Norma Jean began a modeling career and became an actress under the stage name Marilyn Monroe. 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.[9]

Monroe died a year later and left Miracle $10,000 in her final will.[10][11] Along with Monroe's second husband, Joe DiMaggio, and her business manager, Inez Melson, Miracle arranged the funeral, choosing the casket and dress.[12] In an interview with ina.fr, she stated:[13]

"I don't think she committed suicide. It could have been an accident, because I had just talked to her a short time before. 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. She had so many things to look forward to and she was so happy."

Throughout her life, Miracle avoided the media and worked as a manufacturing inspector, bookkeeper and costume designer. Miracle died in Asheville, North Carolina, on May 25, 2014, at the age of 94.

My Sister Marilyn: A Memoir of Marilyn Monroe was published on June 1, 1994 (on Monroe's birthday and 50 years after the half-sisters first met). 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.

It also addresses the mental issues of their mother, Gladys, and the sisters' consequently troubling childhoods, both lacking a mother figure:[14]

We share the same mother, who early in our lives was diagnosed as mentally ill. We grew up feeling abandoned and, though both of us were told we were pretty and talented, we still needed courage and strength. We got that from each other.

The memoir features exclusive photographs and received positive reviews by outlets such as Entertainment Weekly, which wrote that "this portrait of Marilyn is irreplaceable."[15][16] It remains the only authorized biography of Monroe's family.