LONDONDERRY - If fire Chief Mike Carrier is to retire the same way he served the town for 29 years, it will be with little fanfare.

Carrier, 49, announced his retirement in May. His last day is July 20, but he'll stay on part time until the town hires a new chief in the fall. He has yet to decide what he'll do next.

But the transition to new leadership at the Londonderry department should be seamless. For years, Carrier has groomed others in the department for positions of greater responsibility.

"He has a lot of trust in his men," Londonderry fire Capt. Jim Roger said. "He trusts our skills, and I think he wants us to grow so we get experience and grow into positions."

Retired East Derry fire Chief Bob Petrin, a fire science teacher at New Hampshire Community Technical College in Laconia, said Carrier, despite his unassuming manner, was ahead of his time in helping to organize regional fire departments in the late 1980s to respond to hazardous-material incidents.

Some like to keep knowledge and control to themselves, Petrin said. But not Carrier.

He has shared his understanding about hazardous materials, first developed in the U.S. Air Force, where he served between 1975 and 1978. He continued to develop those skills while a Londonderry firefighter and has shown others how to identify and extinguish the materials or stop their spread, as well as how to decontaminate victims and first responders, Petrin said. He was also instrumental in forming the Southern New Hampshire Hazardous Material Mutual Aid District.

In his nearly three decades on the job, Carrier was promoted from firefighter to lieutenant to deputy chief to captain to chief, with a foot on each rung of the departmental ladder. Yet there is no indication of his achievements on his office walls.

The plainness of the office reflects Carrier's character. The walls are bare. Payroll figure sheets and a spiral budget notebook lie on his desk. Personal items are few: a photograph of his wife; a letter mailed to him from a Londonderry firefighter when he was an Army soldier in Iraq; and a 9/11 keepsake of firefighters raising a flag at Ground Zero.

The lone item that reflects his likes or accomplishments is a small glass case with miniature facsimile gas tanks from classic Harley-Davidson motorcycles. He and his wife, Terry, go for rides on his 2005 Harley-Davidson Road King.

Over the years, Carrier has responded to helicopter and small-plane crashes, to house fires and barn fires, to car wrecks and overturned tractor-trailers and to hazardous material spills. The high and low details he prefers to keep to himself, he said.

"There's a lot of tragedy associated with our job and it takes a toll," he said. "It's also very rewarding."

Carrier describes himself as "pretty predictable." He gets up at 6:30 in the morning and goes to work, coming home to spend time with his family. In the summer he'll catch some of a Red Sox game on television before going to bed around 10:30 p.m.

Quiet, professional and productive sum up Carrier's description of his favorite Red Sox player, third baseman Mike Lowell.

"He'd make a good firefighter," Carrier said.

And while Carrier lacks the skills for a baseball career, the unassuming chief holds some of the same traits of his favorite ballplayer.

"The best part of the job is making people's lives better," he said.