Charles Scott, for 3 decades a Middlebury College chaplain

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. -- The Rev. Charles Powell Scott, known affectionately by decades of Middlebury College students as ''Chaplain Charlie," died at his home yesterday. He was 84.

Rev. Scott served as Middlebury's chaplain for more than 30 years.

''The Middlebury community has lost an icon," said Middlebury College President Ronald D. Liebowitz in a statement to the college community.

''Chaplain Scott counseled and advised generations of Middlebury students," Liebowitz said. ''He presided at numerous weddings and occasionally officiated at the weddings of the children of couples he had married in previous years.

''He was revered as a friend and trusted counselor," he said.

Rev. Scott presided over dramatic change in the college's spiritual life: When he arrived in 1951, students were required to attend chapel on alternate weekdays and on Sunday. Mandatory chapel was dropped in 1961.

Rev. Scott worked to hold the campus together during the turbulent war protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He retired as chaplain in 1986 and from teaching in 1990.

Memorial services will be held at 1 p.m. Wednesday in Mead Chapel at Middlebury College and at 11 a.m. Thursday in St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Middlebury.

Liebowitz said that he had visited Rev. Scott, who had been in declining health for months, a few days before his death to tell him that Middlebury's religious life facility in Hathaway House would be named The Charles P. Scott Spiritual and Religious Life Center.

Born in Pittsburgh, Rev. Scott received his undergraduate degree in bacteriology and chemistry from Ohio State and a bachelor's of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.

He served as an assistant minister in Milwaukee for two years before moving to Middlebury in 1951.

He leaves his wife, Tana Sterrett Scott, and five children.