O.C. Writer Helps Tell Billy Carter Odyssey

He was the only First Brother in history to have a beer named after him.

Billy Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s grinning “good ol’ boy” younger brother, became an overnight media darling as he swilled beer and wisecracked his way through the “malaise” of the Carter years from the vantage point of his self-proclaimed “press headquarters and bar”: his two-pump service station in Plains, Ga.

But behind the flamboyant, don’t-give-a-damn irreverence and well-publicized fondness for a six-pack, Miss Lillian’s fourth and youngest child was actually a bright, hard-working businessman with a serious personal problem.

Billy Carter was an alcoholic.

At his lowest point, before entering a detoxification program in 1979, he was drinking half a gallon of vodka and whiskey a day. By his account, he had also begun having memory blackouts, couldn’t go for more than a few hours without a drink and would shake so badly he couldn’t even hold a glass.

“You hear how bad withdrawal from heroin and other drugs is, but I’m here to tell you they ain’t nothing compared to alcohol--not if you’d been drinking like I had,” Carter says of his 11 days of detox in a new autobiographical book that chronicles his better-known escapades and his lesser-known bout with alcoholism, recovery and the pancreatic cancer that would kill him in 1988 at age 51.

“Billy” by Billy and Sybil Carter with Ken Estes (Edgehill Publications; $17.95 and $8.95), offers, as the subtitle says, “Billy Carter’s Reflections on His Struggle with Fame, Alcoholism and Cancer.”

Estes, who lives in Laguna Niguel, said Billy Carter was drinking so much in the late ‘70s that if he hadn’t stopped when he did, “he just wouldn’t have lived longer.”

The irony, of course, is that while traveling on the road of recovery and beginning to speak publicly about his alcoholism, he was diagnosed with cancer.

An intriguing, painfully honest memoir, “Billy” is told from the viewpoints of Billy and his wife, Sybil, in alternating chapters. But it also includes interviews with Billy’s six children and others.

The underlying theme of Billy Carter’s adult years is his alcoholism.

And that’s how Estes, director of communications for the Irvine-based National Assn. of Addiction Treatment Providers, entered the picture.

Estes met Billy Carter in June, 1987, while Estes was doing public relations for Irvine-based CompCare, the nation’s largest alcohol and drug treatment network.

One of Estes’ jobs was to arrange to have a recovering person speak whenever CompCare opened a new facility. Dr. Joseph Pursch, the retired Navy doctor who treated Billy Carter in the alcohol rehabilitation program at Long Beach Naval Hospital in 1979 and who was CompCare’s corporate medical director, recommended Billy to speak at the new facility in Orlando, Fla.

“Pursch kept saying Billy probably was doing as well as any of his former patients,” recalled Estes.

At the time, Estes’ view of Billy Carter was like most Americans--that he was a beer-drinking buffoon, who had been a political embarrassment to Jimmy Carter. And Estes wasn’t at all sure how big the public interest would still be in Carter, who, at the peak of Billy-mania in the 1970s, was pulling down $5,000 for each public appearance.

But, Estes said, Billy “kind of blew my socks off” when he heard him speak to about 500 people in Orlando.

“I wasn’t prepared for what I saw there,” said Estes, who took an instant liking to Billy and vice versa: “I’m a recovering alcoholic. I think that breaks down a lot of barriers. Billy really disliked dealing with his alcoholism with people who didn’t understand it.”

Estes, a former newspaper reporter, had just finished editing a book on alcoholism for CompCare Publications and was looking for a book project of his own to write.

Later that evening in Orlando, Estes asked Billy if he had any interest in writing a book that would deal with his alcoholism, “along with his shenanigans.” Billy told Estes that he had been approached several times to do a “tell-all” type of book during Jimmy Carter’s presidential years but had turned them down.

But several weeks later, Billy called Estes to say he’d like to pursue the book idea further, and they met again when Carter came out to Los Angeles. “Billy hadn’t seen any of my writing,” Estes said. “It was kind of on trust at that point.”

That was in August, 1987.

A month later, Estes heard on television that Billy Carter had a new diagnosis: cancer. “It was just a shock to me,” Estes said.

He waited three days to call Billy, telling him he didn’t know if Carter wanted to go ahead with the project. But he wanted to, if Billy did. “He said, ‘Why don’t you catch a plane and come on down and we’ll talk about it,’ ” Estes recalled.

Estes said they signed an agreement to do the book in Billy’s hospital room, “but when I saw him I thought he was doomed, really. He just looked awful.”

Estes, who had handwritten an outline of the proposed book during his flight to see Billy, said the original intention was to write a lighthearted book that would also deal heavily with Billy’s recovery from alcoholism.

“But at that point, the whole thing had flip-flopped and I was considering it a biography, and Billy was too,” he said. “We thought at that point he probably had three months to go. And I told Billy we’re going to have to deal with the cancer and know all your feelings as you’re facing this. I told him it would probably be difficult for both of us.

“Then I worried he might want to sanitize this, but his response was, ‘Hell, no. Let it rip!’ He didn’t want to sanitize his language or his life.”

As it turned out, Estes said, “Billy hung on for a year,” undergoing chemotherapy and experimental cancer treatments.

In the beginning, Billy was going to talk into a tape recorder and send Estes the tapes. But, Estes said, “he just didn’t want to do it. He was more comfortable talking face to face. I caught Billy where I could. All of a sudden he had caught on as a speaker on alcoholism and there was a rekindling of interest in him.”

In addition to interviewing Billy on the road, Estes spent several weeks with Billy in Plains, where he also interviewed Jimmy Carter and about 40 of Billy’s friends “and a couple of his enemies.”

In interviewing Billy, Estes said: “His first response was usually the Billy Carter response--kind of a flip response. You’d have to ask that question and another question to get down there. But he hung in there with me.”

At one point, Estes said, Billy told his brother Jimmy that for somebody to write a book about him it had to be somebody he knew and liked; it had to be someone who could understand the way he talked; it had to be someone recovering from alcoholism; and it had to be someone who could write.

Jimmy looked at his brother in amazement and said: “Billy, there probably are only one or two people in the whole world who meet your criteria.”

In working with Billy, Estes said: “I just really became very fond of him, and he was much more intelligent than I would have ever guessed.

“What impressed me was how much he trusted me to do it right and go talk to his accountant and his doctor without his being present. And he told them to tell it like it was. The remarkable thing was talking to his children, and they were just very honest in talking about their father’s alcoholism.”

Estes’ primary impression of Billy Carter is that “he was a good man--kind of nuts at times, but he was really one of the most likable people I have ever met. President Carter told me he wished I could have seen Billy back when his health was good. He said he was one of the most well-liked people and most fun people he had ever seen.

“But I didn’t feel like I was dealing with a dying man in this period. The fact of his death didn’t really hit me until I finished the book because he was alive in my mind, really, and I had him on tape. It was a real kind of sad period, a bittersweet period, for me when I finished the book.”

In the process, he said, “I’ve become very close to the whole Carter family, and his wife’s help on the book just can’t be underrated.”

Estes said he and others have encouraged Sybil Carter, Billy’s wife of 33 years and “a marvelous speaker,” to continue to speak on alcoholism.

“In a way her message for the families was even stronger than Billy’s,” he said. “Billy got sober by accident almost and Sybil was the real strong one.”

And what was Billy Carter’s message?

“It’s very simple,” Estes said. “I think Billy’s point was if he could get sober, anyone could. That’s sure a simple message, but I think that’s the strong one.”

Writer Honored: Costa Mesa screenwriter Terry Black’s script for the “Tales From the Crypt” series on HBO earned him an ACE for writing excellence at the recent 11th annual ACE ceremony sponsored by the National Academy of Cable Programming. The ACE is cable’s version of the Emmy. Black, 35, who wrote the 1988 movie, “Dead Heat,” has written a second script for the HBO series.

Spinal Cord: Elle Becker of Santa Ana has written a booklet, “How to Live With a Spinal Cord Injury” (Accent Press; $6.95). Becker, who has been confined to a wheelchair since she was bucked from her horse in 1975, says it is a book she has always wanted to write. She says it was primarily written for the newly spinal-cord-injured person, “to alleviate unnecessary fears and to instill a sense of hope for the future.”

Reading series: Judith Freeman, author of “Family Attractions,” a collection of short stories, and the new novel “The Chinchilla Farm,” will read at noon Friday in the Babb Writing Center, Room 126 of the Humanities Office Building at UC Irvine.

JOSEPH BELL: The doctor who became “kinfolk” to the Carter clan. N3