Nguyen Hong My, the former North Vietnamese fighter pilot in town for the dedication of the Aviation Heritage Park, said he’s already had a friendly and helpful reception from Americans – starting with total strangers in the Chicago airport.

He came to the Daily News on Wednesday with his son, Nguyen Quan, and Phuong Vu, a graduate student in business at Western Kentucky University, serving as translator. Like her, Hong My and his son are residents of Hanoi.

He changed planes in Chicago, but the connecting flight was delayed. With just a few words of English, he conveyed to other travelers that he needed to make a call, and one woman loaned him her cell phone.

Gestures such as that have already made him feel comfortable; the United States doesn’t feel like a strange country, he said.

He called Dan Cherry of Bowling Green, a retired brigadier general in the Air Force – his opponent during the Vietnam War, now his host and traveling companion here.

On April 16, 1972, Cherry flew an F4-D Phantom II and shot down Hong My’s MiG-21 in a dogfight near Hanoi. Now Cherry’s plane is the first display in the new Aviation Heritage Park on Three Springs Road, which is being dedicated today, the 37th anniversary of their encounter.

Hong My will be present, seeing the Phantom up close for the first time. The men first met face-to-face exactly one year ago, on a Vietnamese reunion TV show.

The two quickly became friends; Cherry met Hong My’s family, and invited him to visit the United States.

Hong My said he’s happy to do so, and looked forward to meeting Cherry’s family and friends. He’d like to see more of the country, make new American friends and invite them to Vietnam in turn, he said.

Though their first connection came through combat, Hong My said he doesn’t think he and Cherry were ever really enemies – just doing their respective jobs. He doesn’t blame Cherry for shooting down his plane; on Jan. 19, 1972, he shot down RF-4, a Phantom variant used for photo reconnaissance, showing the unpredictability of war, he said.

He and Cherry are both lucky to still be alive, and able to benefit both of their countries, he said.

“The war closed and ended a long time ago,” Hong My said. “We are friends now, and we will be forever friends. I hope that will be no war like that in the future.”

There is a sizable group of former South Vietnamese citizens now living in Bowling Green who came here after that government collapsed in 1975. Hong My said he hopes all sides now will be able to change the way they think about the war; the current Vietnamese government no longer considers them enemies, and they’d be welcome to return, he said.

Hong My said he was born Feb. 4, 1946, and was a college sophomore in 1965 when he was tapped to join the military. Sent to the Soviet Union for flight training, he returned to Vietnam in 1968.

In 1974, after recovering from the broken arms and back injury he received while bailing out after the dogfight with Cherry, he began working for an insurance company. He retired in 2006, at age 60.

He married in 1979, and had a son and daughter in 1981 and 1982, respectively. He raised the children after divorcing in 1984; now all three of them have been to the United States, since his daughter came to Atlanta last year as an employee of Vietnamese airlines, he said.

Now he hopes his grandchildren will eventually visit the United States, too, and Hong My himself would like to return – and speak without an interpreter, he said, chuckling as his statement was translated. Cherry said he and Hong My are using their joint travel to teach each other their languages.

Both men are scheduled to talk about their experiences at a fundraiser for the park’s perpetual maintenance fund at Olde Stone, but that 5:30 p.m. event is sold out.

They’ll appear together again at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest all day Saturday at the Sloan Convention Center for the sale and signing of Cherry’s new book, “My Enemy, My Friend.” Then they are scheduled to plant a tree honoring reconciliation at 2 p.m. Monday near the Guthrie Bell Tower on WKU’s campus. At 7:30 that evening, they’ll give a public presentation on “My Enemy, My Friend” at the adjacent Mass Media and Technology Hall auditorium, followed by a book sale and signing.

The next day they’ll leave for the Sun ’n Fun Fly-In, an annual event that draws more than 16,000 people and 4,000 aircraft to the Lakeland (Fla.) Linder Regional Airport. There, Cherry and Hong My are scheduled to make multiple presentations April 23-25, according to the Fly-In’s schedule.

After four days they’ll move on to Washington, D.C., where they’re scheduled to give a joint lecture in the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater at the National Air & Space Museum at 8 a.m. April 28.

On April 29, Hong My will depart for Vietnam, Cherry said.