Lulu Gribbin brought a message of hope and resilience to Troy University’s Helen Keller Lecture on Tuesday, encouraging the audience that filled the Claudia Crosby Theater to approach life with a positive mindset.

Gribbin, a student at Mountain Brook High School, survived an attack from a Bull Shark on June 7, 2024, off of Florida’s Gulf Coast. The attack severed her left hand and part of her right leg.

Tuesday’s lecture included Gribbin and her surgeons Dr. Glenn Gaston and Dr. Bryan Loeffler of OrthoCarolina’s Reconstructive Center for Lost Limbs in Charlotte, NC. Paige Ray, TV Production Coordinator for TROY’s Broadcast and Digital Network, served as moderator for the panel.

“I would love it if what every person could take away from today would be to be strong in your hardest moments and to always have a positive mindset,” Gribbin said. “There is always someone out there in the world that would do anything to trade places with you, and they would do anything to have a day in your shoes and to be in your place. I encourage you to be thankful for what you have and to smile, because you never know how far a smile can go in someone else’s life.”

Gribbin shared her memories of the day of the attack, recalling it began as the “perfect beach day” – not a cloud in the sky and calm water.

“We were only in about waist deep water when I remember turning around and hearing my best friend scream ‘shark’! I turned around and saw a big shadow. I didn’t see a fin or anything, just saw this big creature,” Gribbin said. “We all just started swimming for our lives. The next thing I know, the shark bit off my arm, and I raised my arm out of the water and saw the wound. Then the shark was attached to my leg. At that moment, a hero came up and punched the shark off me and I blacked out.”

Gribbin woke up on shore, surrounded by strangers and her twin sister who were taking measures to save her life. She was airlifted to a Pensacola hospital where she underwent surgery to amputate her right leg.

Once stabilized, Gribbin relocated to Charlotte, NC and was admitted to OrthoCarolina’s Reconstructive Center for Lost Limbs. It was there that her journey with Drs. Gaston and Loeffler, co-directors of the OrthoCarolina Reconstructive Center for Lost Limbs, began. The specialists are noted for their development and refinement of Targeted Brain Rehabilitation therapy, which is changing the way phantom limb pain is treated.

The two biggest challenges the doctors faced with Gribbin’s case was fighting infection and saving as much of her leg as possible so that she would be able to walk again with the use of a prostheses.

Multiple surgeries were required, along with cutting-edge virtual reality therapy and other rehabilitation treatments, but Gribbin powered through it all, walking out of the hospital in only 77 days.

“That was really because of them,” Gribbin said of her doctors. “That’s what their program is, and that’s one of the main reasons why we chose to go to Charlotte, and we chose for them to be my surgeons because they have this fast-track program where they’re getting me walking out of the hospital.”

While the average person who loses two or more limbs generally takes around six months before they are walking “relatively well” or using a hand, but the surgeons knew Gribbin was capable of reaching the lofty goals they set for her.

“I think we set pretty lofty goals for Lulu,” Gaston said. “You can tell that she’s very drive and she’s very competitive. She rose to the challenge. Not everybody could do that, but we set the bar high for her and she exceeded it.”

Gribbin’s drive and determination has continued to be evident since leaving the hospital and returning to life as a Mountain Brook High School student. She has focused her competitive nature toward the game of golf and will compete in her first tournament in April.

She also has been active in other areas as well. When she learned that another woman was attacked by the same shark only 45 minutes before her own attack, she contacted her state representative, Rep. David Faulkner, working with him to pass the Lulu Gribbin Shark Alert System Act. The law provides for a real-time geocentric cell phone alert system for shark sightings and attacks in Alabama and has also served as a blueprint at the federal level, leading to the passage in the U.S. Senate of the bipartisan bill known as Lulu’s Law.

Gribbin also founded the Lulu Strong Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit born out of a desire to improve access to advanced prosthetics and therapeutic solutions for all amputees. At the close of Tuesday’s lecture, Gribbin presented Gaston and Loeffler with a check in the amount of $100,000, the Foundation’s first-ever grant, to help them continue their research into virtual reality therapy in the treatment of phantom limb pain.

The Helen Keller Lecture Series, which began in 1995 as the vision of Dr. and Mrs. Jack Hawkins, Jr., was initiated to call attention to and raise awareness of the challenges of those with physical limitations, particularly those affecting sensory ability. This year’s Helen Keller Lecture is sponsored by the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind, the Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services, the Alabama Department of Mental Health, the Helen Keller Foundation, and the Alabama State Department of Education.