DAVENPORT, Iowa — It has been a year since the tragic partial collapse at 324 Main St. in Davenport. But for two families, there are days when May 28, 2023, doesn't feel very far away at all.
The families of Ryan Hitchcock and Daniel Prien say healing and moving forward is a day-to-day process.
Branden Colvin Sr., Hitchcock and Prien all died when the building collapsed. Colvin's family declined to talk with News 8.
Prien's daughter Nancy Frezza lives in Tennessee. She remembers learning about what happened when a member of the media reached out to her husband.
"Just like, 'I don't know if you know, I don't know if you've heard, but your father-in-law was involved or was living at a place where the building came crashing down. Do you know where he is?'" Frezza said. "Those three days my world stood still. And when I found out they found him, I was driving and I had to pull over. I couldn't stop crying because I was hoping and praying that he was not in there."
Frezza didn't grow up with her dad. She met him online for the first time when she was 16 and then later in person five years ago when she spent some time living with him.
"He was a really good grandfather figure and a dad," she said. "I saw how much of a happy person he was and a sweet person he was. He would give anybody anything, even though he barely had anything."
It's hard for her to know she and her sons missed out on spending more time with Prien.
"Very, very robbed," Frezza said. "I'm very glad I was able to be with him and live with him and get to know him. But there's only so much you could talk about in two months that over the course of 20 years you can't really fit it all into that area. So I was really looking forward to the future and everything."
Since last year, Frezza has spent time talking with her dad's old girlfriend and trying to learn more stories about him. She's learned Prien worked in the circus scene and was in the Marines at one point. Now, she's trying to teach her oldest son, Ezra, about him.
"I would tell him about how we spent a couple months with him and how he took care of him," Frezza said. "The one thing I'm really happy about is that I have a picture of Ezra at two months and my dad both taking a nap. So at least I could show him this."
"I want people to remember my dad not as a homeless person, but as a father, as a grandfather, as a brother, as a son," she said. "Know what he was, who he was and (that) he has family that love him and miss him."
Hitchcock's family remembers him as a generous person who loved music. He worked in the IT department at Arconic.
"He would jump into everything with both feet," his uncle Scott Morehart said. "I think I brought home a computer when he was like 12 or 13, maybe a little older, and he took off from there... Before I knew it, he needed more storage memory. So it was always something about the computer."
The two used to watch "The Walking Dead" together on Wednesday nights.
Hitchcock's cousin Nathan Morehart remembers him giving him his first comic book collection.
"Ryan was eight, almost nine years older than me, but I grew up basically under his tutelage in lots of pop culture, music, movies, sci-fi, computer games, all these things we shared," Nathan said. "I talked to him every day pretty much. I would have online chats with him throughout the day and he'd always call me on his way home from work... It's day-to-day. Sometimes you still kind of think the call's coming. And it's, it's not."
"He had his rocking horse and he fell asleep on that," his mom Linda Feliksiak remembers. "He was very easy to be with, you know?"
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News 8 has spent months compiling never-before-seen footage as part of a special report "A Community Rising: Davenport Collapse 1 Year Later." This story is one of many as we commemorate the one-year mark of the tragic event that rocked the Quad Cities community. It would not have been made possible without the hard work and determination of the following WQAD employees: Josh Lamberty, Jon Diaz, Joe McCoy, Jenna Webster, Jonathan Fong, Cesar Sanchez, Shelby Kluver, Scott Weas, Charles Hart, Mikaela Schlueter, Alec Doxsee, Jenny Hipskind, Andy McKay and Corey Spencer.
Find continuing coverage of the Davenport collapse on News 8's YouTube page