Wesley A. Nuxoll, Colfax resident and attorney for over 50 years, passed away on Holy Saturday, March 26, 2016, with his family at his Colfax home. Rosary will be recited at 5:00 p.m. Friday at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Colfax, with a wake to follow at the Colfax Golf Club. Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 11:00 a.m. Saturday, also at St. Patrick's, with vault interment at the Colfax Cemetery. Lunch will follow the burial in the Parish Hall. Friends may call and pay their respects at Bruning Funeral Home on Thursday from 9:00 to 5:00 and Friday from 9:00 to 3:00.

He was born to Francis J. and Marie Antoinette (Stolz) Nuxoll August 14, 1930, on their farm near Greencreek, Idaho. Growing up on the Camas Prairie, his family, the Greencreek community and the Benedictine sisters who taught him instilled in him a deep faith. In high school he played basketball for the Greencreek Tigers and played in the school orchestra.

After graduating in 1948, he enrolled at Gonzaga University. Upon realizing he lacked the math background for engineering, he studied law, graduating from Gonzaga Law School in 1954 which awarded him its graduate Law School Medal. After two years in the army, he joined the Colfax law firm of the late Henry Savage.

In Colfax, he coached youth baseball, taught high-school catechism, sang in and directed the St. Patrick's men's choir, volunteered for Boy Scouting and was a member of the Colfax Elks Lodge, including Exalted Ruler. He helped Gonzaga Law School acquire its first building as well as construction of St. Patrick's and, in what he considered his greatest community legacy beyond his practice, Whitman Community Hospital. He later chaired the Catholic Foundation of the Diocese of Spokane, urging that resources go to parishes without Catholic schools. With his wife Mary Lee, he helped manage the community food bank when it was at St. Patrick's.

One lapse in civic service came in the 1972 Colfax centennial, when the family left town on vacation the day he was scheduled for the dunk tank for failing a beard-growing contest.

In the late 1980s he chaired the Washington Commission on Judicial Conduct, a high-profile tenure for which the Washington State Bar Association recognized him with its President's Award in 1991.

He enjoyed daily card games with friends, as well as morning coffee groups, usually after attending weekday Mass. He used cribbage to help improve his grandchildren's math skills. He enjoyed gardening, golf, skiing, an evening martini and watching baseball and Gonzaga basketball, recalling his freshman year playing basketball at GU. In earlier years he went hunting for pheasants but never for deer. He thought deer were too pretty an animal to shoot, an opinion that changed in later years as deer invaded his yard and garden. With friends, he once tried to canoe the entire Palouse River (with the exception of Palouse Falls).

He treasured time with family at home and at Priest Lake, Idaho. After illness forced his wife Mary Lee Toepel, whom he married in 1962, to move into assisted living, he visited her twice daily.

He is survived by his wife, Mary Lee, in Colfax; one brother, Elred, of Cottonwood, Idaho; and four children: Jon, of Eugene; Jim (Allison), of Boise; Jane (Matt) Roberts, of Cave Creek, Ariz.; and Jan (Jeff) Owen, of Spokane, and seven grandchildren: Ellen Roberts, Annie Roberts, Meg Roberts, Lexi Vandrey, Olivia Nuxoll, Nathan Owen and Emma Owen. He was preceded in death by his parents and three brothers.

The family suggests that memorials be to the Nuxoll Family Memorial Scholarship at Gonzaga University or the Whitman Hospital and Medical Center Foundation.

Bruning Funeral Home of Colfax has been entrusted with funeral arrangements.