ESPN broadcaster’s quest to connect with his late father brings him to Rockford University ghost story

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
Get our free e-newsletter

ROCKFORD — At Rockford University, Knox Fowler was an inspirational theater director who was instrumental in creating the college’s Maddox Theatre.

Then he became a ghost story.

“We would all have different experiences at night,” said Beth Dorland, a 2002 Rockford University graduate who is now the chairperson of its Performing Arts Department. “Every night you would say, ‘goodnight Knox,’ to make sure that nothing happened the next day.”

On Sunday, Fowler will be introduced to the nation in a new light: That of a father who was documenting his feelings and fears as he faced cancer.

Chris Fowler, the award-winning ESPN broadcaster known for calling some of college football’s biggest games, set out on a deeply personal journey to discover his father’s past in the upcoming SC Featured documentary “Finding My Father.” It airs on Father’s Day on SportsCenter.

“50 years since I walked into this place,” Chris Fowler says in the feature while looking out from the Maddox Theatre stage. “This is a place I associate with family tension.”

Knox Fowler led the university’s Theater Arts Department from 1961 to 1974, back when it was called Rockford College. He left to join the graduate faculty at Penn State University, and he 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 to rediscover his father was set in motion when he found an old shoebox filled with eight cassette tapes of his father’s recordings on his experience with cancer. Knox Fowler had been using 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,” said Fowler, one of ESPN’s most recognizable voices, in a statement.

The ESPN broadcaster came to Rockford University in March to film part of the documentary. He met with university archivists and alumni who had worked with his father, Dorland said. The feature also includes an interview with Joyce DeWitt of the 1970s and ’80s sitcom “Three’s Company.” Knox Fowler had cast her in his summer stock theater season.

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,” DeWitt says in the documentary, a portion of which was shared with the Rock River Current by ESPN through a media screener.

Chris Fowler was 13 the last time he had stepped foot inside the theater, he said on Instagram.

“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,” Chris Fowler wrote on Instagram on March 11. “If there’s one place my dad’s spirit would hang out, it’s in here.”

Dorland said there are a few seats in the theater recognized as belonging to Knox.

“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.”

The theater is a considered a fitting place for his spirit because he was instrumental in the planning of its creation, according to his obituary and Rockford University archives.

“He’s the reason the theater was built the way it was built,” Dorland said. “He really helped it becomes a state-of-the-art theater at that time.”

Chris Fowler said he felt no supernatural ripples during his visit, but plenty of emotions.

“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,” Chris 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.”

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.”

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 that are credited to Knox Fowler.

She said Knox Fowler’s spirit is considered to be an encouraging one.

“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.”

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.”

Where to watch | ‘Finding My Father’

When: 7 a.m. (8 a.m. ET) Sunday, June 21 (It will re-air in other editions of the show throughout the day.)

Where: SportsCenter

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas