Artist Paints Tribute to Victims of Northridge Meadows Disaster

Hoping to ease the pain of those who lost relatives and friends in the Northridge earthquake, a Ventura artist unveiled a painting Sunday of most of the 16 people killed in the collapse of the Northridge Meadows apartments.

“We came down here a couple of days after the earthquake, and I saw all of this and said to myself, ‘I have to do this,’ ” Lynn Griffey said. “I don’t know if it was God or what, but I felt like no one really knew who these people were.”

With that in mind, Griffey posted a note at the Northridge United Methodist Church, which was an emergency center in the days after the quake, asking family members for photographs of the victims, she said.

It took three months, but she received photos of 12 of the 16 Northridge Meadows residents who died when the building collapsed. She printed the names of two other victims whose photos she did not receive in time. The families of the final two victims did not want to take part in the project, she said.

Earlier this year Griffey, 27, painted a portrait of Oxnard Police Officer James E. O’Brien, who was killed by a gunman who had gone on a bloody rampage at an Oxnard unemployment office last December. That portrait now hangs in the office of the chief of police in Oxnard, she said.

On Sunday, for the first time she put together the names with the faces of the people she had contacted after the Northridge quake.

“My last experience here was digging through my mother’s apartment, so I think this will be a much nicer memory,” said Julie Tindall, who came from Phoenix, Ariz., with her husband, Ted, to attend the unveiling.

The unveiling, held in the church vestibule, was attended by about 30 friends and relatives of the people who died at the apartment complex.

“She caught my sister’s smile,” Carolyn Andersen said as she stood before the portrait. Andersen, a Sacramento resident, was there to honor her sister, Sharon Engler, who with her husband, Phil, died in the destruction.

“I hope this will put this thing to rest, not that we will ever forget it, but maybe enough so we won’t dwell on it anymore,” Andersen said.

The portrait will be on display at the church for the next week. Griffey said she is in discussions with Cal State Northridge officials about placing it permanently on university grounds.