Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
If the math classes at Idaho’s Greencreek High School in the late 1940s had extended beyond plain geometry, a big chapter in Colfax legal history would never have happened. Also, the firm of Libey, Ensley & Nelson, Inc. would not be inviting one and all to a retirement party for Wesley A. Nuxoll Friday from 3 to 6 at Hill-Ray Plaza.
Nuxoll, one of 13 graduates in the 1948 class at Greencreek, located on Camas Prairie north of Grangeville, was pondering a career as a chemical engineer. His family, part of a strong German catholic community at Greencreek, had him on track to attend Gonzaga in Spokane.
Young Wesley dropped his chemical engineering goal when he learned he lacked enough math to enroll in that line of study. Instead of signing up for the required “bonehead” math courses, he decided to study law.
“I just didn’t have the math background,” he explained Tuesday in the conference room of the law office in Colfax.
Eight years after starting studies at Gonzaga, Nuxoll joined the late Henry Savage in a practice at Colfax. He continued to practice law in Colfax since that time, although he has been in a semi-retirement mode for the past two or three years.
After two years as an undergraduate at Gonzaga, Nuxoll qualified for the law school program. At that time, the school conducted classes at night and many of the faculty members were lawyers in Spokane.
Nuxoll received his law degree in 1954, served two years in the U.S. Army in charge of regimental discipline at Fort Lewis and then went in search of a place to practice law.
On the way through Colfax to help his father harvest at Greencreek in August of 1956, Nuxoll stopped in to visit Henry Savage. He knew Savage from his student days at Gonzaga because the Colfax attorney served as a judge for moot court competition.
Savage a few months earlier had lost his law partner, Chuck DeVange, who had died of a heart attack.
“I walked in to visit Henry, and I walked out with an offer,” Nuxoll noted.
He went on down to Greencreek to help with harvest and returned to Colfax in September of 1956 to begin practicing law.
“Initially, if somebody walked through the door, I’d take their case,” Nuxoll commented. His first years of practice included criminal defense work and personal injury cases with most of the work coming from insurance companies.
He later began to develop a specialty in estate planning and taxation and in 1984, he went back to Gonzaga to earn a master’s degree in business law.
“I’ve had some great clients, people I’ve represented all the time I was here. I really have a lot of respect for the people that I’ve had as clients,” Nuxoll noted.
The practice sometimes involved serving the next generation of client families as the years went along.
What is his advice to students who are considering a career in law?
“Be prepared to work and have respect for your clients,” Nuxoll said.
He noted the profession has become more competitive, although lawyers with established practices here still help younger attorneys get their new practices established.
“There used to be a lot of camaraderie among lawyers, and friendships developed from that. I’m not sure we have as much of that any more,” Nuxoll noted.
The Savage & Nuxoll law firm lineup changed over the years. Gary Libey, now the senior lawyer for the firm, joined when Savage retired in 1976.
Some of the lawyers who have been part of the firm have gone on to develop their own practices or follow other law careers. Nuxoll noted one former member of the firm, Randy Geller, was recently named chief counsel for the University of Oregon.
Nuxoll believes the top project he helped outside of the law office was the push in Colfax and the county to build a new hospital in 1964-65. That project involved a roster of dedicated volunteers who embarked on a major fund raising campaign to match a federal funding program.
“The amount of support we had at that time, and the amount of persistent effort was amazing,” Nuxoll noted. He believes Colfax would not have the medical facility it has today if volunteers around the county hadn’t rallied to the cause at that time.
Nuxoll has also served Gonzaga Law as a member of the school council, an advisory board, for approximately 20 years. He also taught Friday classes at Gonzaga in the 1970s when the law school switched from night classes to day classes and offered morecourses.
Nuxoll also served on the state’s Commission on Judicial Control which conducted hearings on judicial misconduct. He headed the panel for two years, a time he now describes as “years of hell.”
He rates a semester of teaching in Gonzaga’s campus in Florence, Italy, about 20 years ago as his most pleasant extra activity. Nuxoll noted the weekly schedule provided a five-day break when he and wife Mary Lee had time to explore the area.
Married in 1962, the Nuxolls raised four children in Colfax. John is a history teacher in Eugene; Jim is a mechanical engineer with Micron Technology at Boise; Jane is a mom in Fort Collins, Colo .; and Jan is an electrical engineer with a patent company in Spokane.
The Nuxolls have seven grandchildren.
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