Portrait of a Station Fire Victim

Today is the 10th anniversary of one of Rhode Island’s most tragic moments – The Station nightclub fire in West Warwick.

It’s a tragedy that still lingers in the hearts and minds of many Rhode Islanders. It killed 100 people and injured many more.

Among those who died in the fire started by pyrotechnics igniting flammable foam on the walls of the club during a show by the band Great White was a woman who had spent nine years working with children at Bradley Hospital in East Providence.

Lisa D’Andrea, 42, was a special education teacher at Cranston East High School when she died in 2003.

Here is a look back at her in a portrait of the people who died in the fire written for boston.com by Alexander Reid.

Portrait of Lisa D’Andrea

Lisa D'Andrea was an early riser. She began her mornings with a health club workout, finishing in time to arrive for work by 6:15 a.m. at Cranston East High School, where she taught special education.

D'Andrea, 42, enjoyed fitness, liked going to the beach, and had taken up rowing last year. But she also nurtured a strong affinity for people whose ability to enjoy life to its fullest, as she tried to, was limited because of a disability.

Bethany Aspinwall, a friend and colleague at Cranston East, said D'Andrea felt that she had a true calling in life -- to work with disabled children, and spent nearly nine years working at the Emma Pendleton Bradley Hospital, a psychiatric treatment center for children and adolescents in East Providence.

Three years ago, D'Andrea bought Aspinwall's house. It had just enough room for a garden, which allowed D'Andrea to pursue another of her passions.

"She doted over her little flower bed," said Aspinwall. "She felt like her life was OK."

The last time Aspinwall saw D'Andrea was Feb. 19, a day before D'Andrea died in the fire at The Station.

"It was a school vacation week so she went with some other friends" to the nightclub, said Aspinwall. "If it wasn't school vacation, she would not have gone, not on a weeknight."