Finding My – For decades, Rockford University’s Maddox Theatre carried a legend: “goodnight Knox.” Now ESPN broadcaster Chris Fowler returns with a different story—finding a shoebox of cassette tapes where his late father, Knox Fowler, documented his fear and fighting canc
ROCKFORD — On a quiet night in Rockford University’s Maddox Theatre, Beth Dorland learned to end the day with a ritual.
“Every night you would say. ‘goodnight Knox. ’ to make sure that nothing happened the next day. ” said Dorland. a 2002 Rockford University graduate who is now chairperson of its Performing Arts Department. Her words linger for a reason: at Rockford, Knox Fowler didn’t just teach theater. He became part of the building’s lore.
And on Sunday, Fowler will be introduced to the nation in a new light—less like the ghost people whispered about, more like a father who recorded the truth of what cancer did to him.
On Father’s Day. ESPN’s Chris Fowler will appear in the upcoming SC Featured documentary “Finding My Father. ” which airs on SportsCenter. The program follows a deeply personal search: after nearly half a century away. Chris Fowler set out to discover his father’s past while facing the private questions he felt he never fully answered.
“I walked into this place… This is a place I associate with family tension,” Chris Fowler says in the feature, standing out from the Maddox Theatre stage and looking toward where so much of his father’s work still seems to live.
Knox Fowler led the university’s Theater Arts Department from 1961 to 1974, when the school was called Rockford College. He later left to join the graduate faculty at Penn State University and was working as a consultant for NBC television when he died in March 1979 in Colorado Springs at the age of 50.
Chris Fowler’s journey shifted from legend to evidence after he found an old shoebox filled with eight cassette tapes of his father’s recordings about his experience with cancer. Knox Fowler used the audio tapes to document his thoughts for a future book.
“A voice I hadn’t heard since I was 16 set me on a quest to find a father I never really got to know. Until now,” Fowler said in a statement.
The documentary also traces how the past still holds on to the present. Chris Fowler traveled to Rockford University in March to film part of “Finding My Father.” He met with university archivists and alumni who had worked with his father, Dorland said.
The feature includes an interview with Joyce DeWitt, known for playing Janet in the 1970s and ’80s sitcom “Three’s Company.” Dorland said Knox Fowler had cast DeWitt in his summer stock theater season.
In the documentary. a portion of which was shared with the Rock River Current by ESPN through a media screener. DeWitt describes Knox Fowler’s control and attention to detail: “He had complete awareness of everything from the design of the set to the angle of the audience. and he demanded that you rise to his level if you’re going to work with him.”.
If Chris Fowler’s return has a central image, it’s the theater itself—because Knox Fowler helped build it. Knox’s obituary and Rockford University archives say he was instrumental in the planning of its creation.
Dorland put it plainly: “He’s the reason the theater was built the way it was built. He really helped it becomes a state-of-the-art theater at that time.”
The Maddox Theatre legend is older than Chris Fowler’s current spotlight, and Dorland still hears it in the routines of people who work there. She said the university considers that Knox Fowler has seats in the theater that remain “down.”
“We always say that Knox has a few seats in the house that are always down. You push them up and 20 minutes later they’re back down,” Dorland said. “He sat in one of those seats.”
Kresol described how people interpret the theater’s disturbances. Kathi Kresol, a Rockford historian and author of the book “Haunted Rockford, Illinois,” said Maddox Theatre has multiple reports of people seeing shadows, hearing footsteps and whispers credited to Knox Fowler.
She said the spirit is seen as encouraging.
“They felt like they were being watched, but kind of cheered on, too,” Kresol said. “He loved what he did and he loved that college. … We find that some of the hauntings people don’t realize that they’ve passed. He knew he was passed, but he loved it so much that he wanted to keep doing what he loved.”.
Chris Fowler’s own version of the encounter is different. He said he felt no supernatural ripples during his visit, but he still felt the pull of the place.
“His students go to see sides of him that I never did. and got to learn things from him that I didn’t get to learn. ” Fowler said on “The Rich Eisen Show.” “His students are now in their 70s. so they have conversations with them about how he’s still making an impact on their lives and stuff that he had taught them when they were college kids.”.
He described how the recordings in the shoebox changed what the theater meant to him: in part of “Finding My Father,” Chris and his brother, Drew, listen to the tapes together.
“He left a piece of himself with a whole lot of other people and made their lives better through his wisdom and his example, and that’s gratifying,” Fowler told Eisen. “But Drew and I both feel it would’ve been cool to have more first-hand experience in those areas.”
The emotional weight of this return is visible not only in the documentary, but also in the details Fowler chose to post. Chris Fowler said on Instagram that he was 13 the last time he stepped foot inside the theater.
“The state of the art theater he willed into existence and poured himself into during his most fulfilling professional years … they say his spirit still haunts the space. A friendly, supportive ghost. 50 years later, it was truly powerful day for me. I spent time sitting in ‘his’ seat,” Fowler wrote on March 11. “If there’s one place my dad’s spirit would hang out, it’s in here.”.
Even in the hallway of the university’s Clark Arts Center, Knox Fowler’s name still anchors memories. There is still a plaque in the Clark Arts Center green room dedicated to Knox Fowler. It reads. in part: “His great motivation. refusal to compromise and his singleness of purpose keyed the project which culminated in the Cheek and Maddox Theatres and the ancillary facilities necessary to their operation.”.
For Dorland, the theater’s haunting story and the new documentary story are not separate threads. They point toward the same person—one who shaped spaces and then carried his fears privately as cancer approached.
After nearly 50 years, Chris Fowler is trying to do what he couldn’t do as a teenager: understand the man behind the legend.
The documentary “Finding My Father” airs Sunday, June 21, 2026, at 7 a.m. (8 a.m. ET) on SportsCenter. It will re-air in other editions of the show throughout the day.
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