Henry W. Toll Jr. lived most of his life in the Capitol Hill house his grandparents built, but he broke plenty of ground on his own.

Dr. Toll, a coroner's pathologist, attorney and community leader, died Oct. 15 of pneumonia. He was 84.

The Toll family has a long history in Colorado, dating to 1875, when Dr. Toll's paternal grandfather, Charles Hanson Toll, arrived in the state. By 1880, Charles Hanson Toll was the state attorney general. Dr. Toll's paternal grandmother, Katherine Wolcott, was also from a leading family, and her brother, Edward Wolcott, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1889.

Dr. Toll went to Williams College, where he graduated early to serve in World War II. He served as a naval officer, working on Pacific Ocean minesweepers at the end of the war and during the occupation.

"It seemed like that became more and more important to him," said his son, Wolky Toll, of his father's service. "He would get very choked up, and we have a tendency to do the same thing. He would be very touched by the bravery and the sacrifice."

Upon his discharge, he attended the University of Colorado School of Medicine and became a coroner's pathologist at Presbyterian and Denver General hospitals. By 1957, he had added a law degree.

"My mother used to say, we didn't see a whole lot of him for a while there," his son said.

Dr. Toll continued his career as a pathologist, but his work in the morgue had little effect on his personality.

"He and his pathologist friends, and I've always thought it was because of what they did, had this enormous appreciation for life," Wolky Toll said. "Because they could see how tenuous it is. You might think that people who do that job might be sort of morose, but I can't think of a single one of them that was like that."

Rather, it was a love of learning and inquiring.

"You're sort of trying to figure out what happened from the physical evidence," his son said.

"I'm an archaeologist, and archaeology is kind of a tidier way of doing some of those same things. He had the most unbelievable memory for all kinds of things, whether it was medical facts or historical facts. When he was in the Navy, he learned lots of constellations and stuff. He was a navigator on the ship. He remembers all that stuff, and I'm in awe."

Dr. Toll had a committed life beyond his work. He was instrumental in changes to the Colorado autopsy consent law as well as to state abortion rights laws. On the latter, he worked with then-state legislator and future governor Richard Lamm and Ruth Steel to make Colorado the first nation in the country to liberalize its abortion law in 1967. For Dr. Toll, the commitment came through his job, with "the perspective of someone who sees the medical consequences of what happens when you have somebody doing back-alley abortions," his son said.

Dr. Toll was also a founding member of the Denver Lacrosse Club and, with his cousin Henry C. Toll, a leader of youth lacrosse in Denver. He was a member of the Park People Board of Trustees since 1977 and served 15 years on the Rocky Mountain National Park Associates board. He also took the lead in preserving his great-grandparents' ranch, the Henry Toll Ranch, near Rollinsville.

Dr. Toll is survived by Lydia, his wife of 60 years; his children, Wolky, of Santa Fe, Bill, of Hygiene, Ellen, of Anchorage, Alaska, Lois, of Littleton, and Ned, of Harvard, Mass.; as well as seven grandchildren.

A memorial service for Dr. Toll will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Four Mile House, where he and his wife celebrated their 50th anniversary and their 80th birthdays.