The children in a prominent family decided to create for their father’s birthday a book of the family’s history. They commissioned a professional biographer to do the work, carefully warning him of the family’s "black sheep" problem: Uncle George had actually been executed in the electric chair for murder. The biographer assured the children, "I promise I can handle the situation so that there will be no embarrassment. I’ll merely say that Uncle George occupied a chair of applied electronics at an important government institution. He was attached to his position by the strongest of ties and his death came as a real shock."