The DORIS DAY Only We Knew

FRIENDS SHARE SPECIAL MEMORIES FROM MORE THAN 40 YEARS WITH THE LEGENDARY PERFORMER AND ANIMAL WELFARE ACTIVIST

- Amanda Champagne-Meadows

Doris Day loved to take long car rides along the California coast from her home in Carmel. "We'd do the scenic drive, watching people walking and playing with their dogs along the beach," recalls her friend Meg Howard to Closer. "Then we would pick up sandwiches and sit in the car in the parking lot of the Mission Ranch and listen to music while watching the sheep graze in the pasture."

In the last decades of her life, after she'd quit acting and was devoting herself to animal welfare with the Doris Day Animal Foundation, Doris didn't lack for company. The divorced actress and singer, who lost her only child, Terry Melcher, to cancer in 2004, nurtured a circle of close friends, many of whom joined her in her crusade to make the world a kinder place for animals. "She was a survivor who made her own happiness," Lea Price tells Closer. "She took pleasure in the simple things: her home, seeing friends, and helping animals and the people who love them."