They streamed in from every floor of the Eastern Maine Medical Center to see her, crowding the volunteer services room and spilling into the hallway. Medical staff and administrators, patients in wheelchairs and old friends from town, all there Thursday to wish a happy 95th birthday to the tiny dynamo of a woman who has spent the last 15 years at the hospital dispensing hugs, compassion and cheer in equal measure.

Phoebe Politz, wide-eyed at all the attention, flitted from one well-wisher to the next wearing a paper crown that kept slipping and a big smile that never wavered. When a TV reporter asked about the crown, Politz beamed into the camera and said, “I’m the queen of this place!”

And she is, too, agreed those who know her best. The grand dame of the volunteer corps has put in 4,100 hours carting patients around, delivering their mail and flowers, trading hugs for candy, and lifting flagging spirits along the way.

“Phoebe is always so cheerful, and makes a point of stopping and talking to people everywhere she goes,” said Loretta Logan, a registered nurse and Politz’s Bangor neighbor. “That’s such a wonderful trait, especially in a place like this where it can get gloomy at times.”

And while her remarkable energy and keen wit would seem to suggest she could continue in her role indefinitely, Politz figures it’s time to slow down a bit – or at least to start thinking about it. Living alone makes her uneasy these days, she said, especially when she has to get around town in the winter. So next month, she’ll leave the city she has lived in for most of her 95 years and move in with her daughter’s family in New York.

“I’ve been on the move a long, long time,” she said. “So now I’m just going to sit down and get fat.”

Politz was born in Millinocket in 1907. Her parents, Lebanese immigrants, moved the family two years later to Bangor, where they became part of the sprawling ethnic enclave known as Hancock Street.

“The slums, back then,” Politz recalled. “My father was a carpenter, and it was tough. We came up the hard way.”

After high school, she was working in a store downtown when she met Walter Politz, a Marine visiting from Texas.

“He kept writing to me, and I kept putting him off, but after 10 years we got married,” she said.

The couple moved to Texas for a few years, then to Philadelphia, where he built railroad cars. In 1942, they moved back to Bangor to raise their two children. When the kids started school, Politz became a crossing guard. She began on Broadway and ended more than 30 years later on State Street.

“I just loved the children, and got to know them all as they were growing up,” she said. “Some of the kids I crossed are still around, and they come back to see me.”

When her husband died in 1986, Politz felt she had to do something to occupy herself. She was only 80, after all, which was much too young to be moping around the house all day. So she joined the volunteer staff at the hospital, first escorting patients around and then delivering mail to their rooms.

“When they see me coming they know they have a letter, and that brings the biggest smiles to their faces,” she said. “I’ll miss all the people. Being around them has kept me going, too. Besides, at my age I can act foolish in this place all the time and get away with it. And that beats sitting around doing nothing.”