BELLEVILLE – A lifelong Belleville resident and WWII veteran achieved a big milestone Monday, April 24.
Joseph Celfo celebrated his 100th birthday with family and friends at the Brookdale Tavern in Bloomfield on Sunday.
Although he never sought public office, Celfo – who was a self-employed contractor – was politically active after military service and was a big supporter of the Concerned Citizens of Belleville in its early years.
Celfo – the youngest of seven children in the family – grew up on Belmont Ave. in the township’s Silver Lake section, on the Newark border, attended the Abington Ave. Grammar School in Newark.
Then, he went to Bloomfield Tech where he learned carpentry, a skill that was to serve him well later as his vocation.
During his teens, Celfo got to know Celia Rega of Belleville. “Just to say ‘hello’ and goodbye,’ ’’ he said. Until one day when a friend was supposed to have a blind date but the girl didn’t show.
So his friend asked another girl if she’d be interested. “She saw me as the driver in the car and she said, ‘yes,’ ’’ Celfo said. “She liked my curly hair.”
That girl was Celia. The couple married in 1940 – a union that was to last six decades, until her death.
Celfo got a job with General Motors, stripping cars near the site now occupied by the Light Rail station in Silver Lake, but in 1942, Uncle Sam came calling with a draft notice.
And, even though he was the sole breadwinner for his wife and a then-2-month-old baby, Celfo had to go.
He was assigned to the 6th Battalion Seek/Strike/Destroy Tank Destroyer Unit in Europe.
With the artillery apparatus provided by the Army, “we couldn’t knock out the German tanks,” Celfo recalled, so “they were placed by four guns on wheels towed by half-tracks.”
After hurting his back in a combat action, Celfo was sent to an Army hospital to recover, but was returned to active duty at the Battle of Bulge in the winter of ’44-’45.
Celfo had a close call when “a sniper shot at us but the bullet missed me and hit a shield on my half-track. I jumped into a foxhole. My captain yelled at me to move the half-track out of the way, so, just like you see in the movies, I stuck my helmet up out of the foxhole [as a decoy]” before scrambling out to obey the order.
Was he scared during his wartime service? “I wasn’t concerned so much about me getting killed,” Celfo said, “as much as I was about my wife and son being left alone.”
During this three and a half years in the military, “I lost a lot of my friends,” he said.
After an honorable discharge at the rank of corporal, Celfo returned stateside and was fortunate to get his old job back.
But just three days later, he said, “the union went on strike,” and the job action lasted six months.
“So I got a pick and shovel and went to work for a buck an hour down Neck [in Newark],” Celfo said.
Then, after a buddy loaned him a “broken-down Chevy truck,” he “went on the road selling bananas at 10¢ a pound,” he said. He’d drive to Miller St. in the Ironbound to get the bananas and then start his peddler’s route through Belleville.
Bananas were a good choice at the time, especially among moms, he said, because “it was good for babies.”
That lasted “a couple of years,” until Celia suggested that Joe look to apply the tradesman’s skills he learned at Bloomfield Tech. That’s when Celfo became an early entrepreneur, advertising his services as a one-man home repairman.
“I did small jobs, like replacing washers in faucets, fixing windows,” he said. It caught on and he developed quite a reputation in the community as a handyman. Even into his 80s, Celfo was climbing ladders to fix roofs.
“I survived,” Celfo said. “And I got three kids through college.”
Two daughters, Linda, now of Toms River, and Ann, a New Yorker, are retired educators and are both into volunteer work; a son, Joseph Jr., who lives in Pennsylvania, worked for March of Dimes and then went into business selling party goods.
“I’ve also got six grandkids and good in-laws,” Celfo said. “I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.”
He’s also got one living sibling, a brother, Anthony, who is 102.
As a civilian, Celfo became actively involved in his native community, as a driving force behind the Concerned Citizens of Belleville, working with folks like Chris Albanese, Sal Calabro and Vinnie Frantantoni.
“We incorporated as Concerned Citizens 1986 and within two weeks, we had 550 members signed up,” Frantantoni recalled.
“We’d have two socials every year and Joe was a prolific fundraiser for those events. He was responsible for selling 40 to 50% of the tickets. And Joe and Celia would tear up the dance floor.”
The Jitterbug and rhumba were his favorites, Celfo noted.
But Celfo was also in the background working diligently to get out the vote for candidates the civic organization backed or – if the group felt it was needed – helping organize demonstrations or protests at township meetings.
Like the time the group repelled efforts by a former township administration to have the existing Municipal Building torn down and replaced by a “Taj Mahal.”
He was also an active member and a past president of the Senior Citizen Club of Belleville and of the local Disabled American Veterans post. And he previously attended worship services at Holy Family Church in Nutley.
In his early days, he used to caddy at Hendricks Golf Course in Belleville; later, he said, “I loved to play the course.”
Because of physical problems, Celfo has been pretty much confined to his Tappan St. residence but he has proud memories of the days when he could sound off in front of elected officials.
“I miss the satisfaction when we had the right to tell the commissioners not to do things,” he said. “[Our critics] said we were rabble-rousers,” Celfo said. “But no, it was constructive criticism.”
“What’s the secret to living so long? God’s will, that’s all,” he said.
