Chris Ferry, a 61-year-old insurance agent from Linwood, New Jersey, found himself fielding calls from as far away as Germany, the Philippines and Kenya after his two sons surprised him with a now-viral birthday prank: his face and phone number plastered on a billboard over the Black Horse Pike highway stretching toward Atlantic City.
“WISH MY DAD HAPPY BIRTHDAY,” the sign blared, just above his cellphone number. “Love, Your Sons.”
Ferry’s sons — Michael, 28, and Christopher, 30 — moved to Florida from New Jersey more than five years ago after struggles with substance abuse. The two now run a drug abuse clinic in Boca Raton.
The men grew up in Ventnor City, just outside Atlantic City, and had been playing birthday pranks on their father ever since they were young boys traveling to hockey tournaments. Both recalled getting into silly-string-type trouble at the hotels, and always telling waiters and waitresses at restaurants that it was their father’s birthday.
“Hundreds of times,” Christopher Ferry said. “And never on his birthday.”
This week’s gift was just a continuation of that loving jest, but it took on far more momentum than they ever anticipated.
“The ultimate prank,” Christopher Ferry said.
The idea grew out of a conversation about what to get their father for his 62nd birthday, which was last week. The older son said inspiration struck as he was on the phone with the billboard company Interstate to order advertising for his Florida drug treatment center.
“He’s going to kill us,” his younger brother recalled thinking.
The sons had expected some friends, relatives and a few locals from their small New Jersey town to call Ferry, and maybe crack a few jokes.
But when the billboard was installed, Christopher Ferry posted a selfie that his father had taken with the billboard and shared it on Facebook. Before long, the post had more than 200 shares. The rest is high-jinks history.
Their father has gotten an estimated 20,000 telephone calls and thousands of texts.
“He’s actually handled it really well, but last night he was a bit overwhelmed,” Michael Ferry said. “He deleted about 3,000 texts, which took him about an hour and a half to do, and then got about 2,500 within 15 minutes when more news stories aired across the country.”
Despite the nuisance factor, the sons said they were happy to see their father get so much attention.
“You know, we’ve tortured him for years,” Michael Ferry said. “He’s our dad, and he had to see us through our drug addictions, and it really took a toll on him. So, we wanted to do something really nice for him, while also taking a little jab.”
Unless their father threatens to disown them, the men said, the $2,000 billboard would remain on that stretch of New Jersey highway until April 6.
As of last week, Ferry was no longer answering calls to the number plastered on the billboard. He was busy, according to his wife and sons, at the AT&T store ordering a new phone line.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.