Amid the bright images of smiling grandchildren on Marv Koorn’s Oak Harbor office wall is a stark black-and-white photo.

The tall, lanky fire chief is standing next to the wreckage of a three-car crash on Highway 20. It’s night, and firefighters are pulling nine injured people from the wreckage.

In one arm Koorn is holding a radio, in command of the scene. In the other, he holds a swaddled baby girl, his chin balancing a bottle so she can suck and be soothed. Her mother is strapped nearby to a backboard.

Koorn, 66, worked his last day Friday after 37 years as firefighter and chief on north Whidbey Island. He’ll be replaced by Deputy Chief Mike Brown.

The 1980s news photo perhaps best illustrates who Koorn is, a man others describe as a quiet leader, who is calm under pressure and cares deeply about the community he serves.

“He is an example of what it means to serve the community,” said Larry Wall, a fire district commissioner and retired Emergency Services chief. “He’s a leader who steps up but is not an in-your-face kind of guy. He will speak his mind and be a presence, and he doesn’t lead from the rear.”

Fire commissioner Bruce Carman described Koorn as a calm, cool, egoless leader who helps others reach their full potential.

“He took this job with little to no money,” Carman said. “Marv was loyal to the community and not to the dollar. When he started as fire chief, it was about helping his neighbors and friends.”

In his career, Koorn has witnessed incredible tragedy on Whidbey Island and incredible change.

Koorn’s grandparents immigrated to Oak Harbor from Holland in the early 1900s. They settled on 40 acres off Hastie Lake Road. Koorn and his family still live on part of that land and farm it.

He attended Western Washington University and trained to be a teacher. Life had other plans. And, after teaching two years in southwest Washington, he returned to Oak Harbor and took a job with Island County Public Works.

His first day on the job as a volunteer firefighter in 1978, he was handed gear and a plectron box — a shoe-sized instrument that broadcasted messages from the dispatcher. He set it up in the living room, where it would squawk when disaster struck. Often he didn’t need it — he could hear the siren blaring at the fire station three miles away.

It was a simpler time. Firefighters fought fires — and that’s it. Becoming a firefighter was as simple as getting the helmet and the uniform.

“There weren’t any regulations,” he said. “You just went out and fought fires.”

As years passed, firefighters would become first responders to car crashes, medical calls and rescues on steep slopes. They added water rescues to their responsibilities after a sailboat flipped in the 1980s and the community raised money for a rescue boat. Nobody was responsible for water rescues, so firefighters stepped up.

As years have passed, rules and training have become more complex. A lot of those help improve training and keep firefighters safe. Those rules also make it more expensive to run the district, he said.

In 1983, his peers elected him volunteer fire chief. In 2003, when the north fire district combined with the south, he assumed command of a new North Whidbey Fire and Rescue District, which spans from unincorporated areas of Libbey Road north to the Deception Pass Bridge.

Koorn’s last fire before becoming chief sticks in his mind.

Fire was ripping through the attic of the two-story home at the corner of Fort Nugent and Zylstra. He and another firefighter were on the second story, when someone on the ground radioed that the roof was collapsing. They stepped onto a deck at the back of the house. They called for a ladder on the radio but nobody heard.

Across the street his wife and children didn’t know the fate of Koorn. They could hear the frantic radio calls, not knowing he was safe around the back of the house.

After a few tense minutes, someone heard Koorn’s shouts and brought a ladder around back. He remembers the fire because it was his last before becoming chief and because the burnt shell of the house is still standing today.

While Koorn saw many fatalities, another incident sticks in his mind.

In 1996, Koorn responded to a call of a car that slid down a ramp into Hastie Lake with two young children strapped inside. Rescuers scrambled to save the children, attaching a rope to the back of the car and pulling it out. By then one child had died and the other was permanently disabled.

Today as he drives the island, every spot he encountered tragedy gives a jolt.

“It can be difficult emotionally,” he said. “There have been a lot of fatalities on the island. They go to the back of your mind. I’d say you forget but you never forget.”

Koorn doesn’t expect he’ll be bored in retirement. He’s manages rental properties and 60 head of beef cattle.

“I can’t sit around,” he said.