Chris Fowler returned to Rockford University in March to film part of Finding My Father, the SC Featured story built around his late father, Knox Fowler, and eight cassette tapes found in a shoebox. The documentary follows a search that started with recordings made during Knox’s cancer experience and ended with Chris inside the theater his father helped shape.
Rockford University and Knox Fowler
Knox Fowler led Rockford University’s Theater Arts Department from 1961 to 1974, when the school was called Rockford College. He later left for 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 50.
That history is why the visit mattered beyond the documentary itself. Knox was instrumental in the planning of Maddox Theatre, and Beth Dorland said the building still carries his imprint. She said, “He’s the reason the theater was built the way it was built,” and added, “He really helped it becomes a state-of-the-art theater at that t.”
Chris Fowler in Maddox Theatre
Chris said he was 13 the last time he had stepped foot inside the theater. On March 11, he wrote on Instagram that he spent time sitting in his father’s seat, calling it “50 years later” and adding, “If there’s one place my dad’s spirit would hang out, it’s in here.”
He also said, “This is a place I associate with family tension.” The documentary uses that friction instead of sanding it away, pairing the private memory of the room with the professional life Knox built there and the recordings that survived him.
That includes the tapes themselves. Chris found an old shoebox with eight cassette tapes of his father’s voice, and Knox had been using them to document his thoughts for a future book while facing cancer. The project turns those recordings into the center of the story, with Joyce DeWitt among the people interviewed and saying, “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,” in the film.
SportsCenter on Father’s Day
Finding My Father airs on Father’s Day on SportsCenter. For Chris, the sequence is now clear: the tapes led him back to Rockford, the theater led him back to Knox, and the documentary carries both into the same place for viewers who want the story behind the recordings.
