BELLEVILLE ? Newspaper publisher Merle Miller’s legacy best might be depicted by the slender ribbon of highway stretching on the map from the tip of South America all the way to Canada.

Miller, 88, the former editor and publisher of the Belleville Telescope, died Thursday in Manhattan. He was formerly the president of the Pan American Highway Assn., and one of the leading proponents of the plan to establish the only four-lane highway connecting Canada and Mexico.

The entire Pan American Highway links North and South americas, touching the strait of Magellan at its southern end. In Kansas the road becomes U.S. Highway 81 north of Salina.

“The Pan American Assn. was one (organization) he was most involved with in 20 years,” said his son Mark, who succeeded him as editor and publisher. “He was never able to see the completed results of it. But hey, we’re sure enjoying the results. Those traveling north and south, that is.”

Services for Miller were Tuesday at the United Presbyterian Church in Belleville, with burial in the Belleville City Cemetery.

Miller led the charge in the 1980s to gain funding to widen U.S. 81 to four lanes between Minneapolis and the Nebraska state line. His father, A.Q. Miller, might never have fathomed a four-lane expressway when he began the effort to improve travel in 1911. A.Q. Miller was part of the Meridian Highway Assn. that became the Pan American group.

Visiting Argentina, Merle Miller helped to organize a tour of the Pan American Highway in 1967. It took three months to drive the 16,000 miles, some over cobblestones that were brutal to gasoline tanks.

“We carried chewing gum and used it to plug the leaks,” Merle Miller said in 1999.

It took a lot of promoters such as Merle Miller and retired Sen. Ben Vidricksen, R-Salina, and more than $100 million in state and federal dollars to make the highway expansion a reality.

Miller was just as passionate about his family’s role in endowing the journalism school at K-State University. The family, led by Miller’s late brother Carl, gave the school a $1 million donation in 1987 that helped it regain accreditation. The school of journalism was named in his father’s honor.

“When Carl gave the money to the school in honor of their dad, Merle was priceless in helping us write a little bio and in helping us put together a neat little publication,” said Carol Oukrop, former director of the school of journalism.

“I remember him standing in front of Kedzie Hall (the journalism school) and seeing that big bronze plaque with his dad’s name on it, with tears running down his cheeks.”

For about the past year, Miller had been in declining health due to Alzheimer’s disease, said his son Monte, Edwards, Colo.

“He enjoyed his editorial writing, because I think he related to the community a lot through his editorials,” Monte Miller said. “It was his community pipeline. He always liked input from people in the community.”