[2] Serving with the Army during World War II, he was assigned to duty in the European theatre, where he rose to the rank of captain.

Returning to Staten Island after World War II, he lived in Castleton Corners and eventually settled in Graniteville.

[2] After creating sports cartoons for Street & Smith magazines, he began drawing for comic books, including a job at the Eisner & Iger shop.

[6] His works on the Tarzan comics were among the first to be banned by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons of then-West Germany, who supposedly insulted him by stating that he has a "degenerate imagination".

[2] One of the artists interviewed by David Hajdu for Hajdu's authoritative survey of the comic book industry, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, Celardo was a member of Artists and Writers, the National Cartoonists Society and the Staten Island Kiwanis Club.