“I am the proudest mom knowing that I have the most awesome daughter. I can’t even explain the feeling that I have right now. She has done everything that a mother could wish their child could do,” the 52-year-old revealed to Good Morning America, adding, “I wish nothing but the best for her.”

When her daughter noted that a friend’s mother had done something similar, Busbee got the notion to rent the billboard. She initially rejected the notion, but she later had second thoughts.

Picking up the phone and beginning to dial people, asking if they knew where she could acquire a billboard and who she could contact,  Busbee approached a person who had just started a bakery, who then gave her “fantastic” pricing and connected her to the person she employed for her billboard.

“I said, ‘I already know what I want,'” she resumed. “I’m up late at night and I’m like, drawing my vision in my little notebook and what I want it to say, and [I was] so excited.”

Busbee planned for friends and family to meet them at a parking lot near the billboard on the day it went up while still keeping the billboard a surprise from Smalls. Then she told her daughter to meet with her at a nearby bar so they could go see some friends.

The message on Smalls’ billboard, which featured a large image of her wearing a graduation cap and tassel, was: “Let Me Re-Introduce Myself… Dr Kristine S. Smalls — Dr Smiles — Look what good came out of Camden!”

She just stood there in shock,” Busbee added. “So I hugged her. She hugged me back. And I said, ‘We did it, baby. You did it.’ … And then I played Jay-Z’s ‘let me reintroduce myself,'” she counted, directing at the rapper’s 2003 song “Public Service Announcement (Interlude).”

Busbee claimed she felt the presence of her late mother, Doretha Busbee, present with them in addition to their community, who had assembled to support her daughter. “My mom passed away when Kristine was at Kean University as an undergrad. And my mom was very, very attached to my children.”

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The five-year doctoral programme for Smalls, who is now 30 years old, was completed this year with a dissertation on “African American Women’s Perspectives on Mental Health.” Smalls will start a post-doctoral programme in the fall with the Resilience, Empowerment, and Creating Hope (REACH) School Program, a division of Springfield Psychological, a Pennsylvania-based mental health centre.

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