April 25, 1985

Catherine McDermott is being a bit facetious when she calls herself ''the Rosa Parks of fat people.'' But there is nothing frivolous about her lawsuit against the Xerox Corporation, which declined to hire her 11 years ago because she was seriously overweight. In 1974, Xerox approached Mrs. McDermott, then 56 years old, about a position as a systems analyst in its Rochester headquarters. The offer was contingent, however, upon passing a physical examination, and Mrs. McDermott had problems. She stood 5 feet 6 inches and weighed 249 pounds. The company's health services chief, pointing to what he said was the link between obesity and emotional disturbance and the danger it posed to Xerox's disability and life insurance programs, said she should not be hired unless she lost 90 pounds. This is something Mrs. McDermott, who says she has a thyroid condition, was never able to do.

Nancy Reagan and 17 other first ladies today heard speaker after speaker - including a tearful teen-ager - urge that more parents get involved in the worldwide battle against drug abuse. The occasion was the First Ladies Conference on Drug Abuse, which Mrs. Reagan called ''a mother-to-mother conference, rather than a government conference.'' All of the first ladies involved are mothers or grandmothers. Speaking in the East Room of the White House, a former drug abuser named Robin Page, 16 years old, of Cincinnati, told the first ladies she thought that parents of teen-age drug users should step in, as hers did when it became obvious she had a drug problem at the age of 14. They arranged for her, against her wishes, to enroll in Straight, a drug treatment program from which she graduated in March 1984. She is now back in public school, plans to go to college and wants to become a stockbroker or get a government job.

A chart in Business Day on Tuesday with an article about earnings of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the seven regional spinoff companies misstated a percentage increase in revenues for the BellSouth Corporation. Its first-quarter revenues were up 10 percent from the 1984 quarter.

President Reagan, declaring that the time had come for the Government to make some ''hard choices,'' appealed tonight to the American public to lobby Congress for passage of a compromise budget that would reduce spending by $300 billion over three years. In a nationally televised address, the President asserted that the Federal deficit posed a threat to a ''sound and powerful economy'' and said he needed the support of the American people to ''help put our financial house in order.'' ''My fellow citizens, the time has come for Government to make the same hard choices your families and businesses do,'' he said. ''The time has come for your public servants to bring spending down into line with tax revenues.'' Senate Vote Likely Today The immediate target of Mr. Reagan's speech was a Senate vote, expected to take place Thursday, on a compromise budget for 1986 that is supported by the Senate Republican leadership and the Administration. The proposal would cut spending over the next three years by about $300 billion, including $52 billion in the fiscal year 1986, which begins Oct. 1.

For ''Sunday in the Park With George,'' a daring modern musical based on a modernist painting, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine shared the Pulitzer Prize for drama yesterday. Alison Lurie won the prize in fiction for her seventh novel, ''Foreign Affairs,'' and Studs Terkel captured the nonfiction award for ''The Good War: An Oral History of World War II.'' In journalism, Newsday and The Philadelphia Inquirer both won two Pulitzers. And for the first time, there were two double awards: in investigative reporting and feature photography. The awards to celebrate American achievement, now in their 69th year, were announced at Columbia University by the school's president, Michael I. Sovern.