Linda McKenna Boxx had a response to hearing she would be presented the Pennsylvania Environmental Awards' Lifetime Achievement Award at its annual dinner Wednesday.

"I tried to suggest some other candidates," said Mrs. Boxx, 57, president of the Allegheny Trail Alliance and chairman of the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation.

Mrs. Boxx, of Latrobe, has been the guiding force behind the creation of the Great Allegheny Passage, a 150-mile-long system of hiking and biking trails that goes from Versailles, near McKeesport, to Cumberland, Md. It connects there with the C&O Canal Towpath, creating a 318-mile recreational link from Versailles to Washington, D.C.

The passage eventually will extend to Downtown.

Mrs. Boxx also is a supporter of several environmental causes in Western Pennsylvania through her work at the McKenna Foundation.

It is not that she hasn't worked hard to bring the Great Allegheny Passage into being.

"I'm only one person, and there have been so many who have worked on this project," she said. "And there are the real heroes, the people who cut the grass along the trail, take care of it, who keep giving us this great product day after day."

Now almost complete, the passage has a gap only between Baldwin Borough and the Riverton Bridge in McKeesport, Mrs. Boxx estimates the project will require about $2.5 million more and will be finished, "with luck," in 2010.

She said the passage has become a popular tourist destination for many in Pennsylvania, as well as for out-of-state and international travelers.

Mrs. Boxx pointed out that a project the size of the passage required the effort, goodwill and financial support of thousands, from the federal to the local level.

But a look back at the work it took to coordinate and fund the passage, from its genesis in the 1990s, makes another thing clear -- the people who take 500,000 to 700,000 trips on the trail each year owe a great deal to Mrs. Boxx.

Born in Latrobe, Mrs. Boxx later moved to Ligonier. After graduating from Bucknell University in 1974, she worked in state government in Arkansas and Harrisburg before moving back to Latrobe to work at the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundaton in 1982.

She cited her strong interest in environmental causes, especially the health of local waterways, as part of what led her, in 1997, to form the Allegheny Trail Alliance.

"I had been working on a small trail near home" -- the Loyalhanna Creek trail -- "when I reached the end of what I could do. And I started asking questions about why the local trail organizations weren't coordinating more."

That coordination turned out to be one of her biggest challenges as the new president of the ATA.

The same spirit of autonomy that characterizes Western Pennsylvania, Mrs. Boxx said, presented a challenge in building a collective sense of purpose among the various rail-to-trail organizations overseeing sections of the future passage.

"No one voted me ruler of the rail-to-trail groups," she added. "We had to take steps slowly."

Fundraising was also difficult.

"We'd get turned down for one grant, get up, dust ourselves off and apply for the next one," said Mrs. Boxx, adding that the trail has required about $65 million for its construction.

And the time it's taken to bring the passage to fruition has been much longer than she anticipated.

"We thought, originally, it would all be done by 2002."

With "way more than half" her workday occupied by the ATA, Mrs. Boxx said she was lucky to have a job -- and a group of trustees -- that supported her efforts for the passage.

Named for the second wife of Kennametal founder Philip Mc-?Kenna, the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation funds projects in Western Pennsylvania having to do with recreation, conservation and community improvement.

"So the goals of the foundation are not inconsistent with the goals of the ATA," Mrs. Boxx noted.

But effectively having two full-time jobs hasn't been easy. To ensure that more than 99 percent of the ATA's funding goes to actually building and maintaining trails, Mrs. Boxx draws no salary, and the group does not maintain an office.

"Although if you look around my foundation office," she said, citing the piles of passage-related paper, "you'd know where the ATA office really is."

Mrs. Boxx said despite her frequent appearances on behalf of the trail, she isn't naturally a public person.

"The president of the ATA is sort of my alter ego," she said. "The trail doesn't speak for itself, so I have to step up and speak for it."

Mrs. Boxx speaks from experience--she has bicycled the entire length of the trail twice, and has hiked the Maryland portion, which she noted "is exactly the same rate of speed as the mules would have done on the canal tow path."

She also noted that although she has dedicated much of her time to the trail since 1997, many valuable opportunities might have been lost had she not been so ambitious for its future.

She gave as an example the $12 million pledged to the restoration of the tunnel through Big Savage mountain in Somerset County by former Gov. Tom Ridge.

"The current administration has been very good to us," said Mrs. Boxx. "But Tom Ridge was a big fan of biking, and I don't know if we'd have gotten that much from a non-biking governor."

Another accomplishment of which she's especially proud, she said, is the way people living in the communities near the passage have embraced it.

"People who were down on their communities are proud of them now," she said. "It's very rewarding to see what the trail has done for the health and vitality of these places."

There's still much to do, she added, including that last gap.

"I'm [eager] to move on to building connections between the towns and the trail, putting in campgrounds, signage."

Although she's grateful to be getting a Pennsylvania Environmental Award, she noted she's not sure a lifetime achievement award is appropriate.

" 'Don't put me out to pasture,' I told them," she said. "I'm not finished with this project yet."

The Western Pennsylvania Environmental Awards dinner will begin at 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Westin Convention Center Hotel. The awards are sponsored by the Pennsylvania Environmental Council and Dominion.