SURE YOU'RE Right -- condensed by some into Surely Right, formalized by others into Shirley Wright -- lived for the longest time near Greenmount Avenue and, for part of it, in what her friends sardonically called an abandominium, one of the many vacant Baltimore rowhouses occupied by junkies and the homeless, and homeless junkies.

Her real name was Sheila Henson, and she was born in this city on a February day 43 years ago. She grew up on North Carey Street in West Baltimore, the baby in a family of nine brothers and sisters.

She died a grisly death Friday night after years of homelessness, drug addiction, alcoholism and mental illness.

"Sheila was homeless by choice," says her sister, Etta Conley. "She was a happy, outgoing person, loved by all who came into contact with her. ... But there were a couple of things that happened in her life that really devastated her."

Sheila Henson had one child when she was 19, another two years later. "She had five children before she started messing with drugs," says Conley.

And two more after that.

Seven children in the miserable other-world of poverty and drugs.

About 12 years ago, when it became obvious that Sheila Henson was so addicted to drugs that she could no longer care for her kids, relatives stepped in.

"We took the children, took care of them, before Social Services took them and sent them to live with strangers," says Conley. "Losing her kids devastated [Sheila]."

Even though the kids lived with relatives. Even though she saw them from time to time.

"She'd visit the children in the houses where they lived," says Conley.

Or sometimes their guardians took Henson's kids to visit their mother in a shopping center parking lot on Greenmount Avenue, where she spent a lot of time, hanging out, feeding stale bread to pigeons. "We'd go down there and sit in the car, or on the wall," says Conley, "and the children would visit with her and they'd feed the birds with her. ... I'd see her about twice a week. I'd go down and pick her up in the shopping center."

Henson's oldest children are 24 and 22. The others, between 16 and 8, are all living with relatives and attending school. "They all loved their mother, no matter what," says Conley.

No matter that she could not care for them.

No matter that, for most of their lives, she was gone.

After she lost her children -- and her home in the Westport section of South Baltimore -- Henson moved in with another sister, Gladys Green, on East 23rd Street. She lived there several years. Then, after Gladys died, sometime in 1996, Henson moved into an abandoned house on Boone Street, just a block off Greenmount. Almost every day, she'd walk down to 25th Street and get breakfast from Manna House soup kitchen. The workers there knew her as Shirley. They liked her.

"She was always an enigma to us," says Esther Reaves, the longtime Manna House director. "To look at her you'd never think she was homeless. She was always clean and neatly dressed. She was always interested in and worried about other people. And she always made sure she'd collect bread for the pigeons."

She fed the pigeons in a public park along Greenmount Avenue, and sometimes in the parking lot of the shopping center.

It's not clear why her friends on the street called Sheila Henson by that nickname -- Sure You're Right -- but it certainly stuck. When she died Friday evening, in a fire in her Boone Street abandominium, a man in the street was heard calling out, "Sure You're Right, come out of there!"

Conley says her sister was burned beyond recognition. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Henson's family tried to obtain money from two social service agencies for a funeral. They were discouraged until late this week, when Catholic Charities agreed to donate most of the money for a modest funeral and burial. The Calvin L. Williams Funeral Service made arrangements. There will be a memorial service for Sheila "Sure You're Right" Henson at noon today at Zion Hill Baptist Church, 931 E. Preston St. Her children will be there, says Etta Conley. "They loved their mother," she says. "They still love her, even though she's gone."