While the memorial is officially designated a National Park, it was privately funded and is staffed largely by volunteers, many of whom had friends or relatives killed in the bombing. Sugar Smith is a retired Oklahoma City police officer. He works in the recently opened Memorial Center, an interactive learning museum which opened in February. Visitors to the center begin their tour by experiencing the sights and sounds of a typical spring day in Oklahoma City. Adults ready themselves for work.
Children dress for school or day care.
A brief history of the Murrah building explains that Alfred P. Murrah was a orphan who overcame great obstacles to become a federal district judge. The nature of terrorism is explained, as well as it can be explained. Then visitors collect around a door, the door that Sugar Smith commands. A distorted blast sends the meeting participants into panic as 168 faces flash on a huge plate-glass window. TV screens help visitors relive the earliest recorded moments of the tragedy.