Kevin Dublin with George Gee and some of the GDGU Boxing and Mentoring Program participants | Photo: Julien Suaudeau

“So what we have here is two layers of personal history on top of one layer of Philly boxing history,” observes Julien Suaudeau, the host of Hidden City’s podcast, Song of Philadelphia. This spring, Suaudeau has been interviewing Joe Frazier protege Kevin Dublin. As today’s episode begins, the two men are inside the Be Well (Behavioral Wellness) Center at Girard (formerly Girard Medical Center), where Dublin is a social worker. It’s also where he got clean in 1991 and where, twenty years before, Joe Frazier recovered from fighting Muhammed Ali in the Fight of the Century. Back then, this was St. Luke’s Hospital.

Fitting for a podcast that, in form and function, reveals the sonic layers of Philadelphia’s past and present.

You can listen to the fourth episode of Song of Philadelphia season two, “The Heartbeat of North Philly,” right here, or on Spotify or Apple.

“An archeological wonder, if you ask me,” says Suaudeau.

“It’s an amazing place,” adds Dublin. “My decision to walk away [from drugs] was [Frazier], my parents, I had children…I had more than what other people wish they had, so I’m not gonna mess this up…I walked in the door in that building.”

Kevin’s workplace at 8th and Girard is a Philly archeological wonder | Photo: Julien Suaudeau

Dublin recounts his path from being addicted to counseling others. When the receptionist asked why he’d come inside the treatment center the day he decided to get clean, in 1991, she wondered if he was running from someone. The truth was he was running toward Joe Frazier, who had always been a kind of guardian angel. He sat down in the waiting room and there was Frazier on the television. “When you see ‘Smoke’ on the screen, it’s like telling you, okay, this is the place where you need to go.”