Carol was born on 3 July 1958, in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, to Ralph Martin Drumheller and June Louise Schell. Her father died on 23 July 1959, and her mother married Russell Glenn Birt, on 7 February 1964.
She lived first in Conyngham, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and then in Sybertsville, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. In 1966, they moved to Berwick, Columbia County, Pennsylvania, where she lived until she started college.
In 1976, she began studying at Philadelphia College of Bible. That fall she met Harry Albert Ide, whom she married three years later. She switched to Pierce Junior College in 1978, and graduated with an associate's degree from there in 1980. She worked as a legal secretary to Jack Justice, and changed with him from Drinker, Biddle, and Reath to White and Williams.
In 1983, Carol and Harry moved to Ithaca, New York, where he attended Cornell University, and she worked in the Academic Personnel Office, initially as an Administrative Aide, and then as a Personnel Associate. They spent September 1986 through May 1987 in London.
They next moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where their son Andrew was born. Carol volunteered at the Lied Center for Performing Arts for years, helping the House Managers set up the Usher program, and winning the first Usher of the Year award (in May 1991), and eventually working as House Manager and Usher Co-ordinator from 1996-2001.
After leaving the Lied Center in 2001 (in large part because of her health), she worked at a seasonal job at the Folsom Children's Zoo for six months, and then worked as a Library Assistant at Gere Library, in Lincoln.
Her increasingly severe health problems eventually forced her to stop working, in 2007. An autologous stem cell transplant in 2008 improved her health for several years. But on 10 April 2012, her disease-ravaged body could no longer support her, and she died a quiet and peaceful death.