Unemployed Americans Forming Support Groups to Ease Anger, Pain : Recession: In churches, libraries and other public facilities, jobless gather to combat feelings of hopelessness.

The American Way promises citizens that they can touch the stars if they reach high enough.

Jim Beard’s desires are a lot more simple: “All I want is a decent job where I can work 40 hours a week, go home to enjoy my family and my garden, and be left alone.”

But even that goal remains elusive. The 55-year-old foundry worker has been laid off four times since the 1960s, most recently last August. His confidence in this country’s philosophies--and more important, in himself--has been so deflated that he finds it hard to get out of bed, to eat and to kiss his wife and daughters.

Beard exploded with anger at a gathering in a church basement in Woodbury, an affluent community of rolling hills that is dotted with Colonial wood-frame homes.

“I feel inadequate,” he said, hunched in a chair with his arms folded close to his chest. “I feel I have wasted my whole life.”

Seated around him were eight other men and one woman, all over 40, who share his plight. They fanned his fiery anger, blaming President Bush for scrapping yet another major weapons contract in Connecticut that could put more weight on the state’s teetering economy. They grumbled about “the arrogance of the Japanese” and the naivete of American consumers. They complained about job interviewers labeling them as “overqualified,” another word for “too old.”

So went the first meeting of Woodbury’s unemployment support group.

Others like it are forming rapidly throughout the country as the recession continues to ravage the lives of Americans and the unemployed seek emotional relief from their isolation and shame. In churches, libraries and other public facilities, the growing numbers of unemployed are gathering to share stories of pain and hopelessness, yet another sign of the erosion of the American spirit.

At the same time, meetings can be unusually light-hearted, with members delivering repeated humorous one-liners to cheer each other.

“It had been weeks since I had been in a good mood when I lost my job,” said Jonathan A. Apps, a bank operations manager who has been out of work for nearly a year. “I went to the support group and there were people telling jokes about pink slips and overdue bills. They were making fun of interviewers, and for the first time in a long time, I laughed.”

Self-help clearinghouse officials in states across the country say the numbers of unemployment groups or the demand for such groups has doubled in the last year.

In Connecticut--the nation’s wealthiest state--the economic devastation seems particularly severe. Between November, 1990, and November, 1991, the unemployment rate jumped from 4.8% to 6.2%.

More than almost any other state, Connecticut is heavily dependent on dwindling military dollars. Within recent weeks, the state’s largest private employers--United Technologies Corp. and General Dynamics Corp.--prepared for massive layoffs of up to 15,000 workers between them. In addition, the state’s banking, insurance and real estate industries have been badly bruised by the recession.

So it is not surprising that the state has perhaps the most sophisticated network of unemployment support groups. Approximately 50 have been formed here within the last year--including one for people over 55, several for chief executive officers and one for spouses of the unemployed or the underemployed.

Often the leaders are unemployed people seeking a purpose in their idleness. They coordinate the programs with little or no funds. And they bring in speakers to discuss topics ranging from stress management and ego-boosting to credit counseling to resume-writing and interviewing techniques.

The members are all ages and education levels. An overwhelming majority was laid off from executive and mid-level management jobs. Few of the support groups’ members are blue collar, only a handful minorities.

“Support groups seem to be a middle-class phenomenon,” said Vicki Smith, of the Connecticut Self-Help Clearinghouse. “All are invited, but those who have always been extremely poor are too busy dealing with basic survival issues, and a disproportionate number of those people are minorities.”

However, Apps, who received his first charity in the form of a Christmas food basket last year, says that he can now relate perfectly to the struggles of welfare recipients and is walking only a few steps behind the homeless men he sees on the streets every day.

Fourteen years ago, he started driving delivery trucks for a bank for $15,000 a year and worked his way up to becoming a $40,000-a-year computer operations manager. It wasn’t much in Connecticut dollars, but Apps was happy and secure. He bought a home, put his children in the Boy Scouts and the city soccer leagues and spent part of his summers vacationing.

But at 2 p.m. on Feb. 19, 1991, Apps said “the bottom fell from under my feet.” Like many other corporations across the state, his employer was downsizing its staff. He and 12 other mid-level managers were given 20 minutes to clear their desks.

Over the next several months, he sent out hundreds of resumes but only managed a handful of interviews and no job offers. The last interview, with a telecommunications equipment company, was the most demeaning, he said.

“I could tell from the start that I was not the person they were looking for but I really needed the job and tried to talk them into hiring me,” said Apps. “The desperation came through. I talked about how long I had been out of work and how much I wanted to work.

“In other words, I was begging for a job.”

To make ends meet, he now digs ditches for a landscaping company and barters his services for goods.

“I hear people saying ‘Anyone can get a job if they really want to,’ ” he said. “Well they are right. I could get a job flipping burgers, but then my kids won’t have health benefits. We won’t have heat or lights. And I won’t have a car.

“I feel like I’ve failed my family.”

Instilling self-confidence in group members is one of the main missions of all the groups. “It’s OK to wrap your arms around yourself and squeeze,” said Sydney Blackwood, speaking before an over-50 support group in Middletown, Conn. “If you go into an interview feeling as though you are going to be rejected, then it will become a reality.”

“I don’t know what any of us really gets out of these meetings except the feeling that someone really cares,” said another group member, a 59-year-old who moved to Connecticut after a brief television production career in California. “Those of us who are beyond our so-called ‘productive years’ still have a lot to offer.”