Wayne Bolender was an amiable and openhearted fellow who was pleasant to everyone and had always
eagerly embraced the idea of raising foster children. He was wiry, with light gray eyes behind thick
tortoiseshell glasses, and the most prominent feature on his face was his very large nose. He had a jolly
air about him. Sturdy and dependable, as a mail carrier for the United States Postal Service he would
work the same route for thirty-five years (48th Street and Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles). “He loved
being with the kids,” says one source who knew the Bolenders, “and the kids loved him. He was
devoutly Baptist, like Ida. He had a little printing press in the house and he would make prayer cards
for the church with it.”
Though they shared many of the same ideals, Wayne and Ida didn’t have much of a relationship. He
and Ida rarely spoke and when they did it was usually Ida chastising him for some perceived
transgression or insisting he do something he obviously did not want to do. He was clearly intimidated
by her and, some thought, maybe even afraid of her. Indeed, she ran her household with the stringent
rules and regulations of an Old World orphanage, taking her responsibility to the foster children quite
seriously.
Much has been made over the years of Ida and Wayne’s fanatical religious leanings. It’s been written
that they were zealots about their Protestant faith. “First of all, we were Baptists,” says Nancy Jeffrey.
“Though I think along the way Mother did belong to a United Pentecostal Church. We went to Sunday
school on Sunday mornings and then Wednesday night services. I don’t think that was too much.
Mother sometimes did the cooking for big church dinners—there would be a big dinner at the church
for the congregation—or sometimes many of them would come to our home. I’m not sure how it
evolved that my parents were religious fanatics. Maybe it was just part of the myth that was created
around Norma Jeane when she became Marilyn Monroe. Mother taught us to love the Lord and, by
extension, to love each other. It was really the only foundation Norma Jeane ever had, and I think it did
her a lot of good in her life. I know that was Mother’s intention.”
Supposedly, at least according to the stories written about the adult Marilyn Monroe, she was forced to
memorize the following prayer when she was about four—and she would be quizzed often to make
sure she remembered it: “I promise, God helping me, not to buy, drink or sell or give alcoholic liquor
while I live; from all tobaccos I’ll abstain and never take God’s name in vain.” Her foster sister Nancy
Jeffrey scoffs at the notion. “I never heard that prayer in my entire life. I’m not sure that there’s
anything wrong with it, anyway, even if Mother had made us say it. But she never did.”
Another story has it that going to the movies was out of the question because there was no telling what
Norma Jeane would be exposed to in the theater. In fact, Marilyn once recalled Ida having told her, “If
the world came to an end with you sitting in the movies, do you know what would happen? You’d burn
along with all the bad people. We are churchgoers, not moviegoers.” Years later, Marilyn would say, “I
don’t think it’s right to use God to frighten a child like that. I just think that was an awful thing for her
to do to a child.”