Florence Tullis

Florence "Rusty" Tullis (née Steinberg; May 29, 1936 – November 11, 2006), also known as Rusty Dennis, Rusty Mason and Rusty Dennis Mason was an American woman known for being the mother of Rocky Dennis, who was diagnosed with craniodiaphyseal dysplasia.

In 1961, she married her second husband Roy Dennis.

That same year, they moved to Covina, California.

Their son Roy L. "Rocky" Dennis was born on December 4, 1961.

Although Rocky appeared healthy, an X-ray technologist noticed irregularities in the boy's skull when he was about 2 years old.

A battery of tests conducted at UCLA Medical Center confirmed that Rocky had craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, an extremely rare disease in which abnormal calcium deposits in Rocky's skull would distort his face and make it grow to twice its normal size.

Doctors told Tullis that her son would experience failing eyesight and hearing and increasingly severe headaches and that the intense pressure would destroy his brain before he turned 7.

During the years they lived in Covina and Glendora, California, Tullis insisted that her son lead as normal a life as possible.

She ignored doctors who said her son's poor eyesight would prevent him from learning to read, and she disregarded teachers who tried to discourage her from placing him in a public school.

On the night of October 3, 1978, Tullis and a group of biker friends had a party to cheer up Rocky.

At midnight, he awoke with a headache; she comforted him, and as she had done since the beginning, sent him to his room to make himself well.

The next day, Tullis was at her lawyer's office working out details for beating a drug bust she says was a mistake.

Her then-lover Bernie called her at the lawyer's office with the news that Rocky had died.

Rocky's body was donated to the UCLA genetics research center for science and then cremated.

Tullis married her third husband Bernie Tullis, but they separated after six weeks of marriage, both of them still grief-stricken over Rocky's death.

Their story was depicted in the 1985 film Mask, in which Tullis was portrayed by Cher.

Tullis was born in Brooklyn.

Her father was a truck driver.

She had two sisters, Dorothy and Bonnie.

Tullis was Jewish.

When she was 13, Tullis got kicked out of junior high school for truancy.

At age 14, she began smoking marijuana and riding with bikers.

At age 15, she dropped out of school and worked as a "hootchy kootchy" dancer at Coney Island.

When she was 17, Tullis married her first husband, truck driver Tommy Mason; two years later, their son Joshua was born.

The marriage was dysfunctional, and shortly after the birth of Joshua, Tullis moved back with her parents on Coney Island.

There, she worked as an exhibit hawker.

In a 1985 interview with People, Tullis said "They tried to say his intelligence was impaired, but it wasn't true. I think they wanted to keep him out of the classroom because [they thought] it would bother the other kids' parents."

When Rocky was 7, Tullis took him to Las Vegas.

In the lobby of the Hacienda Hotel, he spotted a female dwarf as she made her way through the tourists.

As she walked by, Rocky began to giggle.

"Now do you understand?"

Tullis said.

"Do you understand why people sometimes treat you the way they do?"

Rocky, whose face was already twisted by disease, nodded.

"Rocky," his mother said, "everyone can look like anyone else, but no one can look like you. Take pride in that."

Both parents raised Rocky following their divorce, with Rusty having primary responsibility.

About three weeks before he died, Rocky's headaches intensified, and he had to resort to a wheelchair.

Tullis alerted the hospital that the end was probably near.

"He'd said he didn't want to be on one of those machines, and I promised him if the hospital did that I'd pull the plug," she says.

"He wanted to die at home."