Erik Brady
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Scott Pitoniak and Rick Burton thought they would write a nonfiction book about Wilmeth Sadat-Singh, the barrier-breaking Black quarterback at Syracuse University in the 1930s.
But there was simply not enough documentary evidence about his remarkable life for that kind of book. Then they had a eureka moment: They could write it as a novel – and then tell their own part of the story through the character of Breanna Shelton, a fictional Black sports reporter at a Buffalo newspaper.
The result is “Invisible No More: A Historical Novel,” which tells Sadat-Singh’s story on two tracks: during his own time, from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s, and during Shelton’s, at the turn of the 21st century.
That’s when the young reporter comes upon Sadat-Singh’s largely unknown story and is moved to tell it in full. She ends up chronicling his fight through the virulent racism of his time while she is living through the less overt – but no less real – racism of her own time.
This book is for you if you have an interest in Buffalo sports journalism, Syracuse University sports, or simply a well-told tale of a life well lived. And it happens to be a good day to think about Sadat-Singh because on Friday night, Syracuse football played Colgate, a school his Orange beat twice in the late 1930s.
“The question was: How do we tell this story of a person who has been lost to history, and how do we make him relevant to a modern audience?” Pitoniak said. “That’s when we decided to create this second protagonist, a Black female sportswriter, who is an amalgam of women we have worked with in our careers.”
Pitoniak covered the Buffalo Bills for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle for 25 years, including their Super Bowl era. When he left the newspaper, in 2008, he began writing books and freelancing full time. He has written more than 30 books now. “Invisible No More” is his first novel.
Burton, a professor of sports management at Syracuse, had written a couple of World War II novels before “Invisible.” The authors met when Burton brought his honors class to hear Pitoniak speak at SU about his 2008 book, “Memories of Yankee Stadium.” The pair hit it off and some years later decided they wanted to team up to tell Sadat-Singh’s singular story.
Here is an all-too-brief sketch of that larger-than-life life.
Wilmeth Webb was born in Washington, D.C., in 1918. His father died when he was young; his mother then married Samuel Sadat-Singh, a medical student from India, and Wilmeth took his stepfather’s surname. The family moved to Harlem, where he emerged as a high school sports star. He enrolled at Syracuse to play basketball, then was discovered playing in an intramural football game and coaxed into playing on that varsity team, too.
Sadat-Singh passed as Indian American – Hindu, in the parlance of the day – rather than African American until a newspaper told of his true heritage. Then the University of Maryland refused to play against visiting Syracuse if Sadat-Singh played. SU acquiesced, then lost. When Maryland played at Syracuse the following season, Sadat-Singh played – and led the Orange to a 53-0 win. After graduation, he barnstormed with the Harlem Renaissance, one of history’s greatest basketball teams.
When the United States entered World War II, Sadat-Singh applied to be a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, the only African American unit in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He won his wings as a pilot – and then, in 1943, died when his engine failed in a training mission over Lake Huron. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was 25.
That’s the age of Breanna Shelton as the novel opens in the newsroom of the Buffalo Express. By page 2, the reporters have gathered at Silk O’Loughlin’s Pub, which is based on Ray Flynn’s Golden Dollar, the beloved saloon that was next door to the Courier-Express back in the day.
Pitoniak and Burton are Syracuse grads who have co-written one other book, “Forever Orange: The Story of Syracuse University,” which came out for the school’s sesquicentennial in 2020. The division of labor in that effort was simpler.
“That book had 44 essays – the number 44 has a special significance at Syracuse – and we could parcel those out between us,” Pitoniak said. “It is a lot trickier when dealing with fiction. We had to try to mesh our writing styles. But together we created a pair of protagonists in parallel pursuits.”
The format of the novel allows them to stay true to the facts of Sadat-Singh’s story while making up his thoughts and conversations. The idea of setting some of the action at a newspaper in Buffalo was Pitoniak’s.
“They say, ‘Write what you know,’ ” he said, “and I know a lot about Buffalo from my own sports writing career.”
The Buffalo Express was the name of an actual newspaper, of course. Samuel Clemens (pen name: Mark Twain) was its editor in 1869-71. Pitoniak and Burton gave their fictional paper that name while also making up names for some of the characters working at the Express.
Erik Allen is a combination of Allen Wilson, the late Buffalo News sports writer, and, um, me. (No greater honor than to be associated in any way with the great Allen Wilson.) Bucky Abramowski is a mashup of former Buffalo News sports columnist Bucky Gleason and the late Bills athletic trainer Eddie Abramowski. And Brady O’Sullivan is a mix of former News sports columnist Jerry Sullivan and, um, me again.
The columnist whose actual name appears in the novel is Sean Kirst, formerly of The Buffalo News. When he was a metro columnist at the Syracuse Post-Standard, Kirst wrote a series of stories on Sadat-Singh that inspired SU to retire his basketball number. That was in 2005, better late than never.
Syracuse basketball went 40-13 during Sadat-Singh’s time. The football team played a notable game against Cornell University that brought the legendary sports writer Grantland Rice to Syracuse’s Archbold Stadium. Sadat-Singh slung three TD passes, the last in the closing seconds, as the Orange won, 19-17.
“A new forward-pass hero slipped in front of the great white spotlight of fame at Syracuse today,” Rice wrote. “The phenomenon of the rifle-shot event went beyond Sid Luckman and Sammy Baugh. His name is Wilmeth Sadat-Singh, a Negro boy from Harlem wearing an East Indian name with the deadly aim of Davy Crockett and Kit Carson.”
Pitoniak points out that Sadat-Singh paved the way for many star African American athletes at Syracuse who came after him, including Jim Brown, who started the legacy of No. 44 there. “Wilmeth was Jim Brown before Jim Brown,” Pitoniak said.
No less than NBC’s (and Syracuse U’s) Mike Tirico offered a blurb for the book: “The story of Wilmeth Sadat-Singh is both heroic and heartbreaking. The authors place a much-needed spotlight on a forgotten superstar athlete.”
Tim Wendel, another SU alum and author most recently of “Rebel Falls,” also sings the book’s praises: “It takes persistence, courage, and style to move a hero out of the shadows so a new generation can appreciate such greatness.”
Sadat-Singh died more than 80 years ago. His many victories on grass and hardwood are older still. These pages, though, bring the man to life.
“We could not have created a character as great as Wilmeth Sadat-Singh if we had tried,” Pitoniak said. “He was the first Black quarterback at a predominantly white university – in the 1930s. He was a premed student and an aspiring doctor. He was personal friends with the likes of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway.” And he died as a war hero with the Tuskegee Airmen.
“He had an amazing life. There are a lot of layers. It is a story that had to be told – the true story of the greatest athlete most of us never heard of.”
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Erik Brady
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