For many people in the Bangor area, she is one of the enduring symbols of the Christmas season, a presence nearly as familiar as Santa Claus himself.

There are people who seek her out every year, this tiny, silver-haired figure in the blue uniform of The Salvation Army, to pass along their season’s greetings and to reconnect with childhood Christmases long ago – when they first dropped a few coins into her red kettle and heard the ring of her bell and a cheery “God bless you” in return.

“Everyone who’s known me a long time will come by at Christmas to say hello and to ask how many years I’ve been doing this, and how I keep going,” Lou Dobson says with a chuckle. “When I tell them, it makes me feel like I’m getting old.”

Dobson, who will turn 86 in a couple of months, says she has been tolling in donations for the needy for 60 years now, mostly at Bangor stores from downtown to the mall. She doesn’t know of anyone who has done it longer. From Thanksgiving through Christmas, she’s on her feet for 12 hours at a stretch.

“My legs are holding up OK,” says Dobson, who has been stationed for the last two holiday seasons at Shaw’s Supermarket off Hogan Road. “I keep in shape by walking a mile every day, eating healthy food and drinking lots of water. The only medicine I take is a Tylenol, maybe three times a year.”

Although she uses a tambourine these days to collect donations, she remembers the years she spent tending a Salvation Army kettle in the once-teeming downtown, huddled against the snow and the icy winds.

“Oh, I’ve been out there in every kind of weather you can imagine,” she says. “Now that I can stand inside, it’s a piece of cake.”

Dobson was born in Dexter but spent her childhood in Portsmouth, N.H., where her father worked at the naval shipyard. She was working there, too, when she was first drawn to the Lord and a life devoted to helping the hungry and the homeless.

“I was 18, just working and messing around with my friends, when I saw some people from The Salvation Army singing and playing hymns on the street,” she recalled. “So I went to a service, and that’s when I knew what I wanted to do.”

At 25, she attended the church’s school in the Bronx, N.Y., where she trained for religious duty and studied the Bible. She then ministered in New Hampshire, Vermont and Portland, but never really felt the preacher’s calling. She gave up her lieutenant’s rank and became a church soldier instead.

After being assigned to Bangor – the date escapes her – she never again sat down on a job, whether making shoes on an assembly line or doing God’s work on the street. In the years before the Bangor Mall, she stood outside Freese’s department store and J.J. Newberry, beckoning the downtown Christmas shoppers with her bell. For decades she was a familiar face at Zayre’s, Ames, Kmart and the Shop ‘n Save on Broadway, where she passed out hugs and spiritual comfort to anyone who needed a lift. Her many beneficiaries never forgot her kindness over the years. When they heard Dobson had lost everything in an apartment fire in 1997, they raised $1,500 to help get her back on her feet.

“I’ve met so many good people over the years,” Dobson says. “They tell me they remember seeing me when they were children and went Christmas shopping with their moms and dads. They say they look for me every year, to make sure I’m still around, I guess.

“And no matter how long I’ve been at it, every year I look forward to it all over again.”