Fitzgerald Whitney; Longtime Times Photographer

Fitzgerald Whitney, 72, a longtime photographer for The Times. Born in New York City, Whitney began studying photography in high school and continued his studies after moving to California in the early 194Os. He served in the Army after high school and worked in industrial photography for several years before joining The Times in 1968. He won a Times editorial award in 1976 for feature photography, as well as awards from the California Press Photographer’s Assn. Whitney was often teamed with Charles Hillinger, a popular feature writer who traveled throughout the western United States. Whitney tipped Hillinger off to a 1979 convention of the Tuskegee Airmen, the highly decorated African American flying unit from World War II. The two covered the convention and gave the Airmen some of their first major coverage in the mainstream press. Whitney, who retired in 1993, moved to Atlanta a few years ago and took the name Abdullah Muhammad. On Feb. 21 in Atlanta of heart disease and diabetes, according to his sister, Therese M. Hamilton of Queens, N.Y.